OTHELLO
OTHELLO
OTHELLO
As You Like It
Hamlet
Henry IV (Part I)
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Nights Dream
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
The Sonnets
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages
Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages
OTHELLO
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Volume Editor
Neil Heims
Blooms Shakespeare Through the Ages: Othello
Copyright 2008 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction 2008 by Harold Bloom
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Othello / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom ; volume
editor, Neil Heims.
p. cm. (Blooms Shakespeare through the ages)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7910-9575-1 (acid-free paper) 1. Shakespeare, William,
1564-1616. Othello. 2. Othello (Fictitious character) I. Bloom,
Harold. II. Heims, Neil. III. Shakespeare, William, 15641616. Othello.
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Series Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction by Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Biography of William Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Summary of Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Key Passages in Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
List of Characters in Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
CRITICISM THROUGH THE AGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Othello in the Seventeenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1666Samuel Pepys. From Te Diary of Samuel Pepys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
1693Tomas Rymer. From A Short View of Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1694Charles Gildon. Some Reections
on Mr. Rymers Short View of Tragedy and an Attempt
at a Vindication of Shakespeare, from Remarks on the
Plays of Shakespear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Othello in the Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
1710Sir Richard Steele. On the Funeral of Betterton,
from Te Tatler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
1713John Hughes. On the Tragedy of Othello,
from Te Guardian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
1717Lewis Teobald. From Te Censor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
1733Voltaire. Te Orphan, from Philosophical Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
1765Samuel Johnson. Othello (notes), from
Te Plays of William Shakespear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
CONTENTS
Shakespeare Through the Ages presents not the most current of Shakespeare
criticism, but the best of Shakespeare criticism, from the seventeenth century
to today. In the process, each volume also charts the flow over time of critical
discussion of a particular play. Other useful and fascinating collections of his-
torical Shakespearean criticism exist, but no collection that we know of contains
such a range of commentary on each of Shakespeares greatest plays and at the
same time emphasizes the greatest critics in our literary tradition: from John
Dryden in the seventeenth century, to Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth cen-
tury, to William Hazlitt and Samuel Coleridge in the nineteenth century, to
A.C. Bradley and William Empson in the twentieth century, to the most per-
ceptive critics of our own day. This canon of Shakespearean criticism empha-
sizes aesthetic rather than political or social analysis.
Some of the pieces included here are full-length essays; others are excerpts
designed to present a key point. Much (but not all) of the earliest criticism
consists only of brief mentions of specic plays. In addition to the classics of
criticism, some pieces of mainly historical importance have been included, often
to provide background for important reactions from future critics.
Tese volumes are intended for students, particularly those just beginning
their explorations of Shakespeare. We have therefore also included basic
materials designed to provide a solid grounding in each play: a biography of
Shakespeare, a synopsis of the play, a list of characters, and an explication of
key passages. In addition, each selection of the criticism of a particular century
begins with an introductory essay discussing the general nature of that centurys
commentary and the particular issues and controversies addressed by critics
presented in the volume.
Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time, but much Shakespeare
criticism is decidedly for its own age, of lasting importance only to the scholar
who wrote it. Students today read the criticism most readily available to them,
which means essays printed in recent books and journals, especially those journals
made available on the Internet. Older criticism is too often buried in out-of-print
books on forgotten shelves of libraries or in defunct periodicals. Terefore, many
Othello x
students, particularly younger students, have no way of knowing that some of the
most profound criticism of Shakespeares plays was written decades or centuries
ago. We hope this series remedies that problem, and, more importantly, we hope
it infuses students with the enthusiasm of the critics in these volumes for the
beauty and power of Shakespeares plays.
xi
INTRODUCTION BY
HAROLD BLOOM
Iago is the genius or bad angel of Othello and of Othello. It marks us that we
know more readily how to assimilate Iago than to value Othello. Even my best
students are wary of sympathizing with Othello. He baffles them: how can the
great captain-general so rapidly collapse into incoherence, murderousness, and
apparent self-pity?
If each of us had an Iago as personal spirit, would we do better?
Te tragedy Othello suers because it is preceded by Hamlet, and followed
by King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. Othello does not match the
protagonists of those dramas, and yet Iago does. Te imbalance between Othello
and his devilish Ancient or ensign unsettles us these days. But that is part of
Shakespeares design in a play whose peculiar painfulness rivals King Lears.
Iago has been a fecund ancestor in high literature. His progeny include Satan
in Miltons Paradise Lost, Claggart in Melvilles Billy Budd, and Judge Holden
in Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian. Coleridge spoke of Iagos motiveless
malignancy, but when Satan speaks of his Sense of Injured Merit we encounter
Iagos erce motive. He has been passed over for promotion and Cassio, a sta
ocer and not a warrior, has been given the post by Othello.
Te wound to Iago, as we discern, is onto-theological. He had worshipped
Othello as war-god. Betrayed, Iago activates his pyromaniac drive to carry war
into the camp of peace. A true believer bereft of his ery faith, Iago uncovers in
himself a genius for destroying his captain-general.
Edmund in King Lear is the grand strategist of catastrophe, composing the
play with the lives of the other characters. Iago, an extraordinary improviser,
is rather the tactician of absolute evil. He does not set out with the object of
Desdemonas murder by Othello, but embraces the horror when the Moor warns
him that he must prove Desdemona a whore or else himself be slain by the
overlord of mercenary soldiers.
Magnicent as his triumphalism becomes, Iago remains secondary to the
tragic hero, Othello. In the twentieth century, critics like the abominable T. S.
Eliot and the equally dogmatic F. R. Leavis deprecated Othello, denying him
Othello xii
tragic stature. We can learn from them how not to go about reading so painful
a drama as Shakespeare writes.
Othello, like Lear, has never known himself well. A ghter since childhood,
he has fully earned his professional eminence. His gift is for commanding
others, and for maintaining the separation of war from peace. Serene in his own
sublimity, he believes in the honor of arms, and cannot believe that his trust is
ever wrongly bestowed. Anities abound with Antony and with Coriolanus,
two other sad captains who fall apart as the contradictions in their own natures
encounter overwhelming stress.
How can tragic dignity be maintained if one is reduced to incoherence by
Iagos subtle art? Shakespeare is uncanny in preserving a residue of Othellos
self-identity which can be rearmed in his suicidal nal speech. Eliot and
Leavis thought that Othello was only cheering himself up at the end, but that is
caricature and not accurate analysis.
Hegel, who valued Shakespeare above all other writers, famously thought
that tragedy came about as a conict between right and right. A. C. Bradley
endorsed the Hegelian theory of tragedy, but I nd it remote from Shakespearean
actuality. Tere is no right on either side of the contraries that rend Othello
apart. Te Moor is victimized by a devil, and has no chance whatsoever.
What was Shakespeare trying to do for himself as poet-dramatist by writing
Te Tragedy of Othello? After the impasse of Hamlet, Othello clears the way for the
incredible breakthrough in which Antony and Cleopatra followed the composition
rst of King Lear and then of Macbeth, thus concluding just fourteen consecutive
months in which three masterworks were brought forth. I surmise that the
agony of Othello was a kind of ritual sacrice to the dark gods of creativity
so as to enable Lear, Macbeth and Antony to rise up out of the maelstrom of
Shakespeares capacious spirit.
Times go by turns, and Te Tragedy of Othello has come back from Eliotic
disapproval. Since Eliot was every kind of a racist, including a virulent anti-
Semitic, we can suppose that Othellos African background also provoked the
poet-critic of Te Waste Land. To this day, there is no critical agreement upon
what does or does not happen in the play. I do not believe that the marriage
between Desdemona and the Moor ever is consummated. Elliptical at his
subtlest, Shakespeare is content to leave it uncertain. Te profound sadness of
Othello is appropriately increased by this dubiety. As readers we must construe
for ourselves, and bear the plays shadows as they throng among us.
1
BIOGRAPHY OF
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Act I
The action of Othello begins late at night, in the middle of an argument between
two men as they walk through the empty streets of Venice. Roderigo has been
wooing Desdemona and has trusted Iago to be his go-between. He has given
him quite a bit of money, too, which was to be used to buy gifts for Desdemona.
But now Roderigo has learned that Desdemona has married Othello, that
very night. He suspects that Iago has known about their alliance all along and
has been using him. Iago protests his ignorance and, to further his credibility
as well as to deflect Roderigos wrath, tells him how much he hates Othello.
He complains that he was passed over for the position of Othellos lieutenant
and made his ensign, or standard bearer, and the position was given to Cassio,
whom Iago describes as an inferior man and a sort of dandy. Not quite placated,
Roderigo challenges Iago to explain why he remains in the service of a general,
Othello, whom he loathes. Iago explains to Roderigo that he is only biding his
time, that he is not serving Othello, but himself, and that he has a scheme. He
does not say what particular end he is pursuing. But he does identify his prin-
cipal way of proceeding, by deceit and dissimulation:
[W]hen my outward action doth demonstrate
Te native act and gure of my heart
In compliment extern, tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
Roderigos only response to Iagos very revealing speech is to wonder about
how rich Othello must be if he could get Desdemona. He refers to Othello not
by name, but by using a racial slur, the thick-lips.
As they speak, Iago and Roderigo are walking toward the house of
Brabantio, Desdemonas father. Under his windows, Iago prompts Roderigo to
wake Brabantio, and they both begin loudly calling his name. When Brabantio
comes onto his balcony, Iago addresses him, under cover, using Roderigo as
a front, asking if his house is safe and all his family inside. He cries out,
Othello 6
using the image of sheep mating, that Desdemona and Othello are married,
characterizing Othello as an old black ram and Desdemona as a white ewe who
are together making the beast with two backs. When Brabantio demands
to know who is there, Roderigo identies himself and Iago remains in the
shadows. Convinced that his daughter is not at home, Brabantio calls for the
arrest of Othello, which, as a member of the Venetian senate, he has the power
to do.
As Brabantio is dressing to join Roderigo in the street, Iago slips away to join
Othello at the inn where he and Desdemona plan to spend their wedding night.
Brabantio goes to round up his relatives and police ocers in order to follow
Roderigo to where Othello is and arrest him.
Te scene shifts to the inn. Outside, Iago is telling Othello how he restrained
himself from killing a man who had been speaking maliciously of Othello. Te
audience has just seen that he himself was the man. (But Othello has not.) He
then turns to the topic of Othellos marriage and asks if it has been performed,
warning him of the power Desdemonas father wields. Othello responds with
condence and dignity that he is not afraid of what Brabantio can do, that he
has faith that the senate of Venice will recognize the considerable service he has
done as its general, and that he is proud of his own lineage. Moreover, he points
out, his motive in the marriage is loveotherwise he would not have forfeited
the freedom of bachelorhood.
A troop of men approaches the inn. Iago warns it must come from Brabantio
to take Othello and advises Othello to go inside. Othello rebus him, stating,
Not I. I must be found. / My parts, my title, and my perfect soul / Shall
manifest me rightly. It is not a troop sent out by Brabantio, however, but an
escort, headed by Cassio, sent by the Venetian senate. Te senate is in emergency
session because news has arrived that the Turkish eet is headed to Cyprus, a
Venetian stronghold. Othello is being summoned to the senate, in his capacity
as general, to lead a Venetian force to Cyprus and repel the Turks. Othello
goes inside for a moment, and Cassio asks Iago what Othello is doing at the
inn. When Iago tells him Othello has been married, Cassio asks, To who?
Before Iago can answer, Othello returns. As they are about to proceed to the
senate house, Brabantios band enters, and Brabantio commands his men to seize
Othello. Iago, with drawn sword, challenges Roderigo (who had not long before
been his companion and whom he had set on to do what he is now challenging
him for doing, leading Brabantio to the inn in order to apprehend Othello), and a
general melee threatens. Iago is trying to make chaos. Appearing to be protecting
Othello, he is, in fact, endangering him. But Othello calms everything. Keep
up your bright swords, he says, and adds, showing his ability to speak with a
courtiers wit, for the dew will rust them. He adds, respectfully, addressing
Desdemonas father, Good signior, you shall more command with years / Tan
with your weapons.
Summary of Othello 7
Brabantio is not pacied by this deference, which, after all, comes after
the deed. He calls Othello a thief and accuses him of being an enchanter
who used magic and drugs to bind Desdemona to him. Brabantio makes the
case against Othello that Iago will later hypothesize and Othello will nally
internalize. How could Desdemona go against her nature and marry a black
man whom she would be more inclined to fear than to love? At this point,
however, Othello stands his ground calmly and once again halts an outbreak
of violence. He asks Brabantio where he would like him to go to answer his
charges. To prison, he retorts. Othello is almost teasing in his response,
so full of condence is he. If I go with you to prison, he replies, how can I
appear before the Duke, who has summoned me on important state business?
Brabantio does not relent but orders that they proceed to the senate, where
he may present his case.
At the senate the Duke is analyzing the information he is receiving regarding
the strength of the Turkish eet headed for Cyprus when a messenger arrives
to announce that the Turkish eet has veered and is heading for Rhodes. Te
senators determine this must be a trick, a pageant / To keep us in false gaze.
It turns out to be just that, and the senators learn that the rst eet was merely
joining a larger eet near Rhodes and returning with it to Venice. Here is a
mirroring of Iagos deceptions, which make Othellos gaze false and thus make
him see things falsely.
Brabantio and Othello arrive at the senate, and the Duke greets each man,
telling Othello that he is dispatching him to ght against the Turks. Brabantio
informs the senate he has come on private, not state, business. When he cries
out in grief, My daughter, the senators think she is dead, but he says it is
worse: She has been enchanted and stolen from him by Othello. Te Duke
remains calm and asks Othello what he can say in his defense. Othello delivers
a short oration, admitting that he has married Desdemona and minimizing
his skill as a speaker because of his life as a soldier; he says he will try to
show how he won Desdemona. Despite Brabantios interruption and repeated
accusations that he used witchcraft, Othello is allowed to continue. He tells
the senate to call for Desdemona at the inn and let her speak to them herself.
While messengers are sent to bring Desdemona to the senate, Othello tells
his story of their wooing. Te signicant aspects are: 1) that he had originally
been Brabantios friend, and 2) that it was Desdemona who made her love
known to him and solicited his in return. His summation, She loved me
for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them, must
give the audience or readers pause. Te eloquence of his formulation belies
its fatality. He did not love her for herself alone but for the way he found
himself nobly and heroically reected in her. When he will not nd the image
of himself there that he seeks, that exists only because it is reected in her,
chaos is come again.
Othello 8
Te Dukes response is that he thinks Othellos tale would win his daughter,
too. Tat remark highlights the power of language, and Iagos corruption of
language, upon which the plot of Othello is so dependent. Before Desdemona
speaks, Brabantio concedes that if her marriage to Othello is not the result of
some magical practice, he will yield, especially since he no longer has any choice
in the matter.
Brabantio asks Desdemona Where most you owe obedience, and she
responds that she perceive[s] . . . a divided duty, that the duty her mother owed
to Brabantio she now owes to Othello, her husband. Brabantio, withdrawing in
defeat, nevertheless delivers a fatal warning: Look to her Moor, if thou hast eyes
to see. / She has deceived her father, and may thee. It is fatal not because it is
true but precisely because it is not. Brabantios ill-meant and angry warning is
harmful because it supports Othellos chaotic mistake later.
Te domestic issue apparently resolved, the senate returns to the matter of
Cyprus and the Turks. Desdemona entreats the senate to allow her to live with her
husband in Cyprus and not be left behind in Venice. In her petition, she begins
by acknowledging what marrying Othello involved. She calls it My downright
violence. She says she saw Othellos visage in his mind (signicantly for the
arguments Iago will later use to undermine Othello, she does not say she found
what to like about him in his actual face but rather in his mind) and wants to
share his adventures, for which she loved him, so that they can be hers, too. Te
senate adjourns after deciding the eets departure should be that night and
that Desdemona should be entrusted to Iagos care on the voyage while Othello
travels on another ship.
As they were the rst to appear in the only act of Othello that takes place in
Venice, so Roderigo and Iago are the last. Remaining after the senators have led
out, Roderigo laments that he will kill himself now that he has denitively lost
Desdemona. Iago convinces him not to despair but rather to turn his property
into money and follow the eet to Cyprus, continuing his quest for Desdemona.
She will not, Iago assures him, stay faithful to someone as distasteful as the Moor
must become to her, considering her youth and her Venetian tastes. During the
formation of this intrigue, Shakespeare also continues to develop Iagos religion,
as it were, the things he holds as fundamental to his self-denitionprimarily
that he is the creator of himself and of the way others perceive reality. Te scene
ends with a soliloquy in which Iago promises to use his power in order to create
complete chaos.
Act II
Act II begins on the seashore of Cyprus as several Venetians from the fortress
look to the sea, which is tempestuous, and speculate about the fate of the
Turkish fleet. A messenger enters, bearing the news that the storm confounded
the Turkish fleet and, consequently, their design on Cyprus has been frustrated.
Summary of Othello 9
One after another, then, ships arrive from Venice. The first brings Cassio and
his party. Cassio reports that the Turkish fleet has indeed been destroyed, but
his happy news is tempered by his anxiety for the safety of Othellos ship, which
was separated from the rest of the fleet during the storm. Next to arrive is the
vessel carrying Desdemona, who is accompanied by Iago and his wife, Emilia,
who also acts as Desdemonas maid and companion.
All the chief actors, except for Othello himself, are now collected onstage,
awaiting the arrival of Othellos ship. During this interval of apparent comic
relief, they pass the time, as Desdemona says of herself in an aside, not merry
but to beguile their anxiety about Othello by seeming so. In this context
they reveal their essential characteristics outside the context of the plot. Cassio
shows himself to be a rened gentleman, a courtier in the tradition prescribed
by Baldassare Castiglione in his handbook Te Courtier. A soldier, he is also
accomplished in the use of ne, decorated, and rened language and in
gallant behaviorespecially behavior that shows his devotion to women. On
Desdemonas arrival, he greets her after asking the men of Cypress, let her
have your knees as the grace of heaven. When Emilia, Iagos wife, emerges,
he kisses her, explaining to Iago that it ought not gall your patience . . . Tat I
extend my manners. Tis my breeding.
Iago then begins an interlude of comic ribaldry. He tells Cassio that he would
have enough of Emilia if he got as much of her lip as Iago gets of her tongue. But
all the while Emilia is silent, while Desdemona quietly supports her. Alas, she
has no speech, Desdemona says, countering Iagos portrayal of her as outspoken
or a scold. Tis unspeaking Emilia, who can go through the play hardly noticed,
as a sort of machinery of the plot, will burst forth with a torrent of searing and
honest language in the last act of Othello.
Desdemona reveals herself, too, in her aside. She tells the audience that
she is not actually merry but seems the thing she is not in order to beguile,
to trick, the oppressive feeling away. Desdemona is not a one-dimensional or
passive character. She is a complex gure whom Shakespeare draws much more
by innuendo, from her responses in particular situations, than by probing her the
way he does Othello. Te ways of her personalitynot her virtue or her love
are what lend fuel to Iagos later assault upon her husband. Tere hangs over any
reading of Desdemona the sense that she did dissemble, even if innocently, as
her father claims. And later (III, iii, 2026), when she promises aid to Cassio,
she exclaims,
assure thee,
If I do vow a friendship, Ill perform it
To the last article: my lord shall never rest;
Ill watch him tame and talk him out of patience;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
Othello 10
Ill intermingle every thing he does
With Cassios suit.
When she goes about her task, it is with an ardor that might irritate the fondest
husbandeven one who has not already been subverted, like Othello, in his
ability to see straight. She persists in her demand to know when Othello will
see Cassio: tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn, / On Tuesday noon, or night,
or Tuesday morn. / I prithee, name the time, but let it not / extend three days.
She begs and bargains and stipulates. And then she begins the middle section
of what is becoming a short oration, lecturing Othello on the insignificance of
Cassios fault, even recognizing that the conditions of war can change the way
things are done. When Othello does not respond, she reminds him, I wonder
in my soul / What you should ask me, that I should deny you. When he finally
yields and says, Let him come when he will; / I will deny thee nothing, and
she has won her suit, she is yet not content. Why, this is not a boon; / Tis I
should entreat you wear your gloves / Or feed on nourishing dishes or keep you
warm / . . . Nay, when I have a suit / Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
/ It shall be full of poise and weight, / And fearful to be granted. Othello reas-
sures her that he will grant her suit regarding Cassio and asks her to leave him
for a while. She obeys, but not without a sharp riposte: Shall I deny you? No.
Farewell, my lord. It is this side of Desdemona that is foreshadowed in the
character in Act II, scene 1, who banters with Iago.
As the interlude of waiting ends, Iago observes Cassio speaking to Desdemona
and notices his gestures, how he takes her by the hand or kisses his three ngers
as he speaks, and formulates his plot, incorporating the material he has just
seen. When Othello arrives, there is more for him to observe. Othello takes
Desdemona in his arms and renews his vow of love to her. Tey are both roused
to such an ecstatic passion of joy that they nearly totter in their happiness. Iago
notices that, too. I cannot speak enough of this content, Othello exclaims after
describing the ecstasy of his soul, It stops me here [touching his heart]; it is too
much of joy. In an aside, blending his voice with their experience, Iago says, O,
you are well-tuned now! / But Ill set down the pegs that make this music.
Before Iago does, however, Shakespeare devotes 10 lines to a picture of
peace. Othello declares, Our wars are done, greets old friends, speaks sweetly
to Desdemona, and orders Iago to supervise the unloading of his ship. Before
Iago obeys, when all the other actors have left the stage, again there appear on it
only the stage manager and his principal prop, Roderigo, and Iago begins to set
his plot and the rest of Othello itself in motion.
Honing the arguments he will later employ directly to Othelloparticularly
that for a young woman of Desdemonas complexion and class, marriage with
Othello is against natureIago convinces Roderigo that Desdemona is in love
with Cassio. He explains that Cassio is to command the guard that keeps order
Summary of Othello 11
in Cyprus that night and instructs Roderigo to provoke him into a ght. By this
strategy, Iago says, Roderigo will advance his cause with Desdemona. He agrees
and Iago continues to develop the script of his plot, working himself up to carry
it out in a soliloquy that ends the scene.
A herald appears and reads Othellos proclamation, which announces a
triumphant celebration of the defeat of the Turkish eet and of his marriage,
with dances, bonres, feasting, and reveling that night in Cyprus between ve
oclock and eleven.
As Othello parts from Cassio that evening, leaving him responsibility for
the watch, he conrms that Iago is most honest when Cassio mentions that he
has already given instructions about the watch to Iago. Othello leaves and Iago
enters. Rather than setting down to business, as Cassio orders, Iago counters
merrily, Not this hour, lieutenant; tis not yet ten o the clock. Our general cast
us thus early for the love of his Desdemona; who let us not therefore blame:
he hath not yet made wanton the night with her; and she is sport for Jove.
Cassio politely corrects him when he counters Iagos lascivious description of
Desdemona, saying, Shes a most exquisite lady. But Iago transforms his eort
with another debasing comment: And Ill warrant her full of game. Once
again Cassio goes on the defensive, saying, Indeed, shes a most fresh and
delicate nature. Teir contest in verbal representation continues for a few more
rounds, nally ending in Iagos triumphant, well, happiness to their sheets!
He then invites Cassio to take a stoup of wine with him. When Cassio declines,
citing his inability to hold his liquor, Iago persists and prevails, especially after
Montano has given Cassio a little to drink. Once Cassio is inebriated, the plot
unfolds as Iago had planned it earlier with Roderigo. Casio is seen drunk on
duty. Roderigo gets Cassio into a skirmish. Drunken, brawling, and derelict in
his duty, Cassio is disgraced. Iago, in testifying about him to Othello, twists
rhetoric to make himself sound as if he were advocating for him when he is, in
actuality, testifying against him. It is Othello, with his authority, who quells
the riot instigated by Cassios brawling, who questions his ensign, who rebukes
his lieutenant, who sees to the care of the wounded, who deputizes Iago with
authority while Cassio is in disgrace, and who comforts Desdemona, who had
been awakened by the hubbub.
After everyone has departed, once again Iago remains, but rather than have
Roderigo as his dupe/marionette, now he has Cassio. Like Roderigo bewailing
his failure to win Desdemona, Cassio now bewails his drunken behavior and its
consequences. As he used Roderigos desires to further his own ends, so Iago
uses Cassios and advises him to sue to Desdemona to intervene with Othello for
him. Iago knows the materials he is working with and which he must transform
to seem other than they are in Othellos mind, for his description of Desdemona
is remarkably true. Tat he knows what she is really like and how good she
isyet is unaected by it except in as much as he wishes to crush heris what
Othello 12
gives fearsomeness to his strength. He says of her, as he explains to Cassio why
it would be a good idea to petition Desdemonas intervention, that [s]he is of so
free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness
not to do more than she is requested. He will use this goodness in her and make
it look like evil, dening debased ardor rather than blessed disposition as the
reason for her advocacy for Cassio.
Cassio leaves, grateful to Iago for his ear and his advice (unable to see him
for what he is, the man who maneuvered him into his troubles). In a devilishly
charming soliloquy, Iago then tries his art directly on the audience, acting
delightful as he delights in the subversiveness of his evil. He makes the audience,
by enjoying or fearing him, aware of his power; the viewers are complicit with
him, nearly co-conspirators. Roderigo enters and interrupts his soliloquy, once
again complaining: He is accomplishing nothing in Cyprus, he is spending
his money, and tonight he was beaten up in a brawl. No longer needing him
to move his plot forward, Iago puts Roderigo o by telling him to be patient.
Once alone, Iago schemes. Now he needs his wife, Emilia, not Roderigo, to go
to Desdemona with entreaties from Cassio. He also needs to guide Othello to
the spot where Cassio will solicit Desdemonas aid. In other words, he has just
outlined Act III, scene 3, of Othello.
Act III
The third act begins the next morning, when Cassio, following Iagos advice
with Venetian excess, plants a band of musicians under their window to
serenade Othello and Desdemona when they rise. A clown, also present,
makes ribald jokes as he mocks the musicians and drives them out. He then
teases Cassio, first changing the meaning of his words, giving an innocuous
comic foreshadowing of Iagos sinister device. Do you hear me, mine honest
friend, Cassio says to the clown. The clown twists his words to be able to
respond, I hear not your honest friend. I hear you. As the clown parts with
Cassio, further mocking his f lorid eloquence, Iago enters, making sure the
stage is set. He is assured Cassio is ready to play his part, and he says he ll
send Desdemona to him immediately; he will also take Othello aside so that
your converse and business / May be more free. It is just this tactic of his
that Othellos character has made him shun every time Iago has advised him
to be secretive. But Cassio accepts Iagos assurance of privacy with humble
thanks, even after Emilia assures him that in the conversation she has just
overheard between Desdemona and Othello, Othello was favorably inclined
toward him.
Scene 2 is but six lines long. It shows the public Othello guiding a delegation
inspecting the fortress and handing letters addressed to the Venetian senate to
Iago. Othello instructs Iago to give these letters to the pilot of the ship leaving
for Venice. It shows Othello in control and Iago subordinate.
Summary of Othello 13
As is his way, Iago is playing a double game and does not, in fact, provide
Cassio with privacy when he speaks with Desdemona. As he has planned it,
Iago steers Othello to their interview. As the interview ends and Desdemona
has promised to use her full art and inuence with Othello to help Cassio,
Emilia announces that she sees Othello approaching. Cassio does not choose
to stay. By this action he becomes the image of suspicion when Iago mutters,
as if to himself, but loud enough for Othello to hear, Ha! I like not that.
When Othello asks what he said, Iago, rather than answering, responds with
the vaguely unsettling, Nothing my lord; or if, but breaks o with a dismissive,
I know not what. He has framed the situation so that when Othello says, Was
not that Cassio parted from my wife? there is something ominous surrounding
his words. Iagos response is a deft Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it /
Tat he would steal away so guilty-like, / Seeing you coming. In the rhetorical
act of seeming to exculpate Cassio, he actually incriminates him.
Te strength of Desdemonas solicitation, to an unjaundiced eye, would only
give it greater credibility. But because Othellos perspective is being shaped by
Iago, Desdemonas ardor only suggests the wrong kind of attachment to Cassio.
While Othello is apparently not alarmed by the ardor and insistence with which
Desdemona argues in Cassios favor in the rst part of Act III, scene 3, its after-
impression helps Iago when he later shapes Othellos thoughts to doubt her
honesty and faithfulness. In Act III, scene 3, Othello assures Desdemona that
he will grant her suit and asks her to leave him for a while. Alone with Othello
now, Iago asks insinuatingly if Cassio knew about Othellos love for Desdemona
before their marriage, while Othello was wooing her. Othello answers he did,
from rst to last. When he then asks, Why dost thou ask? Iagos apparently
innocuous answer, but for a satisfaction of my thought, / No further harm,
rings with the sound of something sinister. When Othello adds, defensively, that
Cassio had been their go-between, Iago only says the puzzling, Indeed?, which
rattles Othello. Indeed? Othello repeats and then asserts, Ay, indeed! Othello
asks, Discernst thou aught in that? / Is he not honest? But Iago replies only
by repeating his word, Honest, my lord? Honest? Ay, honest, Othello states
again. When Iago equivocates in his answer, Othello demands of him what he
thinks, but Iago only repeats Othellos word as he had before: Tink, my lord?
At the end of his rope, Othello pushes his words back at him, crying out, Tink,
my lord! By heaven, thou echoest me. Othello is nearly hooked now. What are
you hiding from me? is the gist of his tirade, and he is ready to hear and accept
anything Iago might reveal. Iago keeps taking him in circles, seeming to speak as
his friend and protector, until he infects him with the idea that Desdemona has
been unfaithful to him with Cassio and that she could not possibly not have been,
given the disparity between her and Othello, given Othellos inferiority, given his
race and age. Othellos very struggle not to believe what Iago insinuates brings
him nearer belief. In order to reject Iagos estimate of him, he must entertain it. In
Othello 14
order to struggle against the idea of Desdemonas indelity, he must imagine it.
Once imagined, it looms over him and nally consumes him.
Iago leaves Othello to a tormented reection on his own inadequacies. Ten
Desdemona enters, seeing him in his debilitated state, and asks if he is not well.
When he says with bitter self-mockery that he has a pain upon my forehead,
which she understands as a headache, he means to suggest that he feels the horns
of a cuckolded husband growing upon his forehead. She attempts to tie her
handkerchief around his head in order to soothe the ache, but her gesture only
annoys him. As he pushes her away, she drops the handkerchief and follows him
out, confused by his ill-tempered response. Emilia, who has been with her, sees
the handkerchief and picks it up. She mentions she is glad to nd it because Iago
has repeatedly asked her to steal it, although she says she has no idea why. She
resolves to have the handkerchief copied, give her husband the copy, and return
the original to Desdemona, thus betraying neither her duty to her husband nor
to her mistress.
When Iago reenters and nds Emilia alone, he begins to scold her, but she
says she has a thing for you, and he teases her, saying its a common thing to
have a foolish wife. Goaded, she shows him the handkerchief to tease him but
not yet to give it. He snatches it from her, however, and bids her to think no
more about it and to leave him. She obeys, and Iago begins to weave the next
strands of his plot, which involve dropping the handkerchief in Cassios room and
cementing Othellos jealousy with tries light as air. When Othello returns,
Iago sees that his subversion is nearly accomplished. In the remainder of the scene,
he wins Othellos trust entirely through innuendo, feigned reluctance to say what
he knows, and outright lies. He succeeds in bringing Othello to the full rage of
tormenting jealousy and simultaneously forges a bond of enduring service to him.
Te fourth scene of Act III shifts locations to a street in Cyprus. Desdemona
and Emilia are looking for Cassios house so Desdemona can tell him that she
has won his suit for him. In the context of Iagos lies about her and Cassio, it is
telling that Shakespeare immediately makes it clear that Desdemona does not
even know where Cassio lives. Te clown, of whom she asks directions, plays
with her words rather than answering her questions. She asks him where Cassio
lies, using the word in the sense of where he lodges. But the clown takes it in
the sense of where does he tell a falsehood and refuses to answer for fear of
calling a soldier a liar. When Desdemona changes her language, the clown says
that he would lie if he answered because he does not know. Tis interlude oers
comic relief in the midst of the painful unfolding of a mans destruction and the
murder of a youthful spirit. But it also reects the problem of the malleability of
language, which is a theme at the heart of the play, since Iago fashions reality in
Othellos mind with words falsely used.
Te clown is dispatched to see if he can nd where Cassio resides. Alone with
Emilia, Desdemona is upset that she cannot nd her handkerchief. She tells
Summary of Othello 15
what great value it is to Othello and how such a lost handkerchief could make a
husband jealoustherefore, she is grateful that Othello is not a jealous man. She
defends him against Emilias challenge, but the scene that followsin which
Othello demands the handkerchief from Desdemona with increasing jealous
furyallows Emilia to say of him, Is not this man jealous? Desdemona herself
is confused, saying, I never saw this before. As Emilia retorts how women are
in general ill-used by their husbands, Iago enters, directing Cassio to speak with
Desdemona. She tells him that she cannot do anything right now, but she will
help when she can, and he must be patient, because Othello is displeased with
her. Hearing this, Iago intervenes, Is my lord angry? and says he will go to
attend to him.
Speaking by themselves, Desdemona and Emilia wonder what is troubling
Othello, praying that it is not that monster, jealousy. As they leave, Cassio
remains onstage, and Bianca, a prostitute in love with Cassio, enters. She chides
him for avoiding her, and he tells her that he has with leaden thoughts been
pressed but will make up for it in the future. He gives her the handkerchief
to take out and copy, since he likes the work. She protests that it was given
him by a beloved, but he tells her not to be vile, that he found it in his room
and does not know how it got there. When he asks her then to leave him, she
protests, but he says he does not want Othello to see him with a woman. He
says he will walk a little way with her and then leave her. With the acceptance
of circumstances women are expected to grant, she says, Tis very good. I must
be circumstanced [accept circumstances].
Act IV
Like the first act of the play, Act IV of Othello begins in the middle of a con-
versation. Now, however, it is not between Iago and Roderigo but rather Iago
and Othello. Othello has taken Roderigos place as Iagos gull, or dupe. Iago has
so deeply penetrated Othellos consciousness that he can fabricate reality in his
mind simply by stringing words together and making up painful erotic scenarios
that trumpet Othellos betrayal:
Iago: Will you think so?
Othello: Tink so, Iago!
Iago: What,
To kiss in private?
Othello: An unauthorized kiss.
Iago: Or to be naked with her friend in bed
An hour or more, not meaning any harm?
Othello 16
Othello: Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm!
It is hypocrisy against the devil:
Tey that mean virtuously, and yet do so,
Te devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.
Iago: So they do nothing, tis a venial slip:
But if I give my wife a handkerchief,
Brilliant psychologist that he is, Iago segues from these imaginings to the
concrete matter of the missing handkerchief, yoking the truthfulness of those
images to that apparent fact. Te success of his assault is obvious when Othello,
raving, falls in a trance. While he is in a t, Cassio enters. Iago explains that
Othello is subject to such t but tells Cassio he wants to speak with him once
Othello has recovered.
Iago leaves and sets up the next scene. Othello, hidden and unobserved, will
eavesdrop on a scene of Iago and Cassio talking lasciviously, he thinks, about
Desdemona. It is actually Bianca, however, who is the butt of their ribaldry.
Othello then watches as Bianca angrily returns Desdemonas handkerchief,
insulted that she is being used to copy some minxs token.
Alone with Iago, Othello cries of Cassio, How shall I murder him, Iago?
Regarding Desdemona, he orders, Get me some poison, Iago, this night. He is
delighted to be overruled by Iagos injunction: Do it not with poison. Strangle
her in her bed, even the bed she has contaminated. Othello repeats, Good,
good! . . . Very good. Into the midst of this conversation, Desdemona and a
deputation from Venice on state business, led by Lodovico, enter. As Othello
reads letters from the senate ordering him to leave Cyprus for Mauritania, he
overhears the polite conversation between Desdemona and Lodovico, in which
she tells him regretfully of the falling out between her husband and Cassio. It
angers him. When Lodovico tells her that he thinks the letters order Othello
away, making Cassio governor of Cyprus, she responds, Trust me. I am glad
ont. Othello explodes, yells, and strikes her, shocking all who behold the blow.
Lodovico intervenes and asks Othello to make her amends. But Othello only
continues to rage, claiming she weeps crocodile tears and ordering her out of
my sight, blind to the terrible irony that she already is: He can no longer see
her. He only sees Iagos phantom, with which Iago has replaced her in Othellos
mind. Iago, thereby, has subverted Desdemona as well as Othello, for each word
or action of hers will be interpreted not in the context of herself but in the
context of Iagos version of her, which has replaced her in Othellos mind.
Desdemona starts to leave, saying to Othello, I will not stay to oend
you. Lodovico implores Othello to call her back, and Othello does, using the
opportunity to further humiliate Desdemona and himself. What would you
with her, sir? he asks Lodovico once Desdemona has returned. Lodovico is
Summary of Othello 17
surprised, as he did not desire anything with her but only that she should be
called back and be asked forgiveness. Othello speaks of her as disobedient and
a whore and leaves, cursing to himself. When Lodovico is alone with Iago,
he voices his astonishment and questions him about Othello. Iago begins to
attempt to ensnare him with innuendo against Othello, assurances of his own
reluctance to speak, and suggestions that Lodovico look for himself.
Te scene shifts. Othello is questioning Emilia about Desdemona. Emilia
assures him with all her eloquence that Desdemona is pure and faithful. But
when Othello bids her go fetch Desdemona, he thinks to himself that Emilia
is nothing but a brothel mistress who will speak well of any of her girls. Of
Desdemona he is convinced,
Tis is a subtle whore,
A closet lock and key of villanous secrets
And yet shell kneel and pray; I have seen her dot.
In this way Desdemona is negated, and her good actions are transformed, in
his mind, into indications of her falseness. She pleads with him on her knees,
but he merely sees her further damning herself with denials. He brands her
a whore and, when she pleads she is none, he apologizes by saying he made a
mistake when he took her for his wife. When he leaves, he summons Emilia
and treats her as a brothel keeper, throwing her some coins. He is in a rage of
perverse pleasure, enjoying the wit with which he accompanies his and his wifes
degradation.
Alone with her mistress, Emilia begins to show concern for Desdemona. Te
quiet presence she had exhibited up to this point changes under the weight of
circumstances. Emilia now becomes a strong, sure, and comic voice in the play.
Even in front of Iago she curses the man who might infect another mans mind
to jealousy and drive him to the madness that now torments Othello and his
wife. Foreshadowing their interplay in Act V, scene 2, Iago tells his wife to be
quiet. Now she is. Ten she will not be.
When Desdemona and Emilia leave, Roderigo steps forward. Now he is at
his wits end, he tells Iago. He fears Iago is cheating him, his money is gone,
and he will not put up with it any longer. He wants restitution of the monies
he has given Iago in the attempt to corrupt Desdemona. Iago disarms him by
congratulating him for his pluck in asserting himself. Iago tells Roderigo after
one such act of real assertion, killing Cassio, Desdemona will be his. Roderigo
leaves, mulling over Iagos plot.
Scene 3 begins at the Citadel, where Othello and Desdemona live. Othello is
leaving with Lodovico and ordering Desdemona to get ready for bed. Alone and
preparing for bed, Desdemona feels herself haunted by a song of unfaithfulness
that she remembers her mothers maid, Barbary, singing after her own lover
Othello 18
proved mad / And did forsake her. Reective after her song, Desdemona asks
Emilia if there really are women who are unfaithful to their husbands and if she
would do so for all the world. Emilia responds, taking the words for all the
world literally, and says she would for the whole world. But Desdemona says
she would not be unfaithful for anything. Starting by speaking of womens faults,
Emilia quickly turns to their husbands and shows that they are the real cause of
their wives faults. She oers a category of similarities women share with men
and concludes by reiterating that the ills women commit are in response to ill-
treatment by men. But Desdemona says she prays for the strength and the ability
not to do bad because bad was done to her but by bad mendsomehow to
bring good from evil.
Act V
Out in the street, Iago readies Roderigo for the part he will play in what
must be a climax in the drama Iago has directed: Cassios murder in a street
brawl. Iago plans Roderigos, too, out of fear that Roderigo might try to
regain the sums he gave Iago and tell what he knows of Iagos machinations.
Cassio passes by. Roderigo lunges out at him, sword drawn. Cassio responds
with his sword. They fight. Roderigo is injured; Cassio, cut in the leg and
maimed. Othello enters to survey the results of the fight and is pleased to hear
The voice of Cassio crying out, I am maimed forever. Help, ho! Murder!
Murder! Othello blesses Iagos noble sense of thy friends wrong and leaves
for Desdemonas bedchamber, where he vows, Thy bed, lust stained, shall
with lusts blood be spotted.
After Othello withdraws, Lodovico and Gratiano pass by and hear Cassios
and Roderigos cries for help. Iago then enters, carrying a light and a weapon, an
irreproachable representative of authority. He is the rst to put forth a question.
Whos there? he demands. What noise is this that cries on murder? Hearing
Cassios voice, he asks him who has done this. Cassio does not know but says
he thinks that one of them is nearby. Iago asks Lodovico and Gratiano for help.
Seeing the wounded Roderigo, Iago falls upon him, crying, Tats one of them,
and, stabbing Roderigo, calls O murdrous slave! O villain! Roderigo, only
upon being fatally wounded, fully realizes how he has been abused. O Damned
Iago! O inhuman dog! he curses. After he dies, attention is then paid to Cassio,
whose wound is bound. When Bianca passes by and hears Cassios cries, she
approaches him with comfort, but Iago apprehends her, saying she is a strumpet,
a prostitute who may somehow be involved in the crime. Cassio is removed in a
chair, and Iago follows to see him cared for. He orders Emilia to hasten to the
Citadel to tell Othello and Desdemona of the nights events.
Scene 2, the nal scene of Othello, is breathtaking for its dramatic and verbal
poetry. Othello enters to nd Desdemona asleep beside a still-burning candle
and, with great delicacy, grieves over what he is about to do. He is convinced he is
Summary of Othello 19
impelled by honor, not by a base impulse. He realizes the weight of a human life:
He can relight a candle he snus out, but he cannot make breath he has stopped
breathe again. He kisses Desdemona in her sleep, torn between his love for her
and his diseased sense of love and justice, which demands her death. She wakes.
With a sense that he is performing a holy action, he asks Desdemona if she has
prayed. She says she has, and he asks her to remember any crime / Unreconciled
as yet to heaven and grace, so that she may add it to her prayers because he
would not kill thy unprepared spirit . . . / I would not kill thy soul. Alarmed,
Desdemona says, Talk you of killing? His acknowledgement triggers her cry
of heaven / have mercy on me! He replies, Amen, with all my heart. She
then begs him not to kill her. He tells her to remember her sins. She protests,
Tey are loves I bear to you. For that thou diest, he answers. Desdemona
pleads with him, but he tells her to be still. Saying she will, nevertheless, she
asks him, Whats the matter? He tells her: Te handkerchief which I so loved
and gave thee, / Tou gavst to Cassio. He responds to her denial by warning
her that she is on her deathbed and, therefore, must not perjure herself. Her
protestations have no eect. He is beyond believing anything she says. He saw
the handkerchief in Cassios hands, he says. He found it then, she counters.
She swears she never gave it to him and implores Othello: Send for him hither.
/ Let him confess the truth. Othello responds that Cassio has confessed [t]hat
he has used thee, and Iago has killed him. When Desdemona groans, Alas, he
is betrayed, and I undone, Othello storms, Out strumpet! Weepst thou for him
to my face? Enraged, he then strangles her as she struggles. As Desdemonas
resistance melts and she lies dying, Emilia calls from outside the bedroom door.
Othello hears her and guesses she has come to speak of Cassios death. He
hesitates to admit her to the bedchamber, for If she come in, shell sure speak
to my wife. And then the enormity, nality, and horror of what he has done
hit him:
My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife.
O insupportable! O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that the arighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.
When Emilia enters, she does not, at rst, see Desdemona murdered on
her bed but instead tells Othello that Cassio has killed Roderigo. Othello,
not hearing what she actually said, responds, Roderigo killed? And Cassio
killed? When she responds, No, Cassio is not killed, Othello cries out, Not
Cassio killed? Ten murders out of tune, / And sweet revenge grows harsh.
Signicantly, almost as if it were a slip of the tongue, Othello, in his fury that
Cassio has not been killed, reveals that revenge, not justice or sacrice, was the
motive for his murdering Desdemona. As he speaks, Emilia hears a dying cry
Othello 20
from Desdemona, falsely, falsely murdered. Emilia cries for help, and when
she demands to know who hath done this deed, Desdemona responds in her
last breaths, NobodyI myself. Farewell. / Commend me to my kind lord,
and dies, even in death maintaining her absolute loyalty to her husband. It is
the only falsehood that she utters in the course of the play. Othello, at rst, tries
to deny his responsibility: Why, how should she be murdered? he asks; You
heard her say herself, it was not I. But then he confronts himself and groans,
Shes like a liar gone to burning hell! / Twas I that killed her. His confession is
not yet acknowledgment of a wrong, however, for he justies himself by saying
that Desdemona was false, a whore. Emilia calls him a devil and says he lies.
Othello insists that Cassio did top her and, in corroboration, she ought to [a]sk
thy husband. Te exchange between them mirrors and reverses the exchange
between Iago and Othello in Act III, scene 3, beginning at line 99, in which Iago
echoes Othellos words to make him doubtful of what he thinks. In Act V, scene
2, when Emilia hears Othello implicate Iago in the murder of Desdemona and
the attack on Cassio, she replies, dumbfounded, My husband? Othello repeats,
Ty husband. With each further revelation that Othello makes against Iago,
Emilia repeats with greater alarm, My husband, until Othello says to heras
he had once said to Iago, By heaven, thou echoest meWhat needs this
iterance? Woman, I say thy husband.
If he say so, Emilia retorts, may his pernicious soul / Rot half a grain a day.
He lies to the heart. / She was too fond of her most lthy bargain. Provoked by
her words, Othello draws his sword against her to quiet her, but she is fearless
with outrage and cries out for Help! / Te Moor hath killed my mistress!
Murder! murder! Her cry brings Montano and Gratiano, two Venetian nobles
deployed in the administration of Cyprus, as well as Iago. Immediately upon
seeing her husband, she scolds him, You have done well, / Tat men must lay
their murders on your neck. She orders him to [d]isprove this villain [Othello]
and deny that he told him Desdemona was false. Equivocation being useless
under her grilling, Iago admits, I did. Emilia cries out, You told a lie, an
odious damned lie! / Upon my soul, a lie! A wicked lie! Her honest and open
denunciation of Iago breaks the hold he has had on language throughout the
play. Despite the actual horror of the events upon the stage, the audience
and readers can now experience the opposite of the dread that Iagos speech
invites, the relief of hearing truth proclaimed and crooked things made straight.
Strengthened by the very act of speaking, Emilia asks Iago, She false with Cassio?
Did you say with Cassio? He confesses he did but attempts to use his husbands
prerogative and instructs her, Go to, charm your tongue. She dees him: I
will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak: / My mistress lies murdered
in her bed. While the attendants in the chamber respond in amazement and
Othello says, It is true, indeed, Emilia continues to pour forth her anger and
deance, calling out villany and refusing to obey Iagos command to go home.
Summary of Othello 21
In his grief, Othello attempts to explain his act and justify it, thus assuring
himself, if his explanation is credited, that he has not fallen from his position
of honor. He tells how a handkerchief he gave Desdemona was then given by
Desdemona to Cassio. Emilia continues her magnicent aria, beginning, O
God! O heavenly God! Iago interrupts, telling her to be quiet. She refuses, and
he draws his sword. But she continues,
O thou dull Moor! that handkerchief thou speakst of
I found by fortune and did give my husband;
For often, with a solemn earnestness,
More than indeed belongd to such a trie,
He beggd of me to steal it.
Iago calls her a villainous whore, ironically the same slander he sought
to attach to Desdemona. But Emilia continues to defy him and explains that
Desdemona did not give the handkerchief to Cassio; that she, Emilia, found it
And I did givet my husband. Now enlightened, complete darkness overcomes
Othello. He runs, sword drawn, at Iago but is prevented from stabbing him;
however, during this business, Iago stabs Emilia, joining Othello in wife murder.
Emilia is laid beside Desdemona in death. Iago ees. As Emilia lies dying,
singing the willow song Desdemona had sung when preparing for bed, Othello
decides to kill himself, for his honor ought not to outlive the honesty of
Desdemonas chastity and the faithfulness and honesty of Emilias revelation.
At this point, nearly everything that is going to happen in Othello has
happened. Iago will be captured, refuse to speak further, and be removed to
be tortured and made to confess. Cassio will be deputed in Othellos place, and
Lodovico will return to Venice to make a report to the senate. Te only thing
remaining is Othello himself. He kills himself. But as he suers his pre-death
agony, in the most exquisite and powerful verse, Othello bares himself and nds
himself unbearable. He tears himself apart, convinced that the last service he
can do for the Venetian state is to kill himself as one who has oended, in his
fall, the city-state of Venice itself.
23
KEY PASSAGES IN
OTHELLO
Act I, i, 5866
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
Te native act and gure of my heart
In compliment extern, tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
Shakespeare begins Othello in the middle of a conversation between Iago and
Roderigo. As they speak, the spectator or reader becomes aware of the issues
that drive each. For Roderigo, it is love for Desdemona. For Iago, it is hatred
of Othello. Iago has just told Roderigo that Othello has that very night mar-
ried Desdemona. Roderigo is incensed that Iago has not let him know of the
impending marriage sooner, especially because Iago has represented himself
to Roderigo as a go-between for him and has taken money from him, presum-
ably to buy gifts for Desdemona in support of Roderigos courtship.
Tis passage occurs just after Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello
for having promoted Michael Cassio, instead of himself, to be his lieutenant.
Roderigo challenges him, saying that he would not serve Othello under such
circumstances. After Iago explains, I follow him to serve my turn upon him,
he talks about himself, giving this sharply dened and accurate description of
himself.
Te great western Socratic belief encapsulated in the phrase Know thyself is
usually thought of as a key to virtue. Given this speech of his, it is clear that Iago
does know himself. In his case, however, the Socratic maxim is subverted by a
Machiavellian duplicity. Iago knows himself because, he believes, he constructs
himself through the power of his own will. Iagos knowledge of himself is not
a mark of virtue but rather a technique of evil. Yet in his ambiguous formula,
Othello 24
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago, he reveals something about himself that
he may not know. If he were Othello, he seems to be saying, he would not want
to have a person like Iago around him, because of the illwill Iago bears him and
the evil he will commit. But there is the sense of another meaning in his words,
too. If he were Othello, whom he would prefer to be and regrets not being, he
would not have to be Iago.
What he does say clearly, and what will inform the ways in which the
audience or reader perceives his every word and deedand which the characters
in the play, to their great disadvantage, do not knowis that he is not what he
seems to be and that everything he says and does is calculated to deceive.
Act I, i, 6874
Call up her father,
Rouse him: make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen,
And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with ies: though that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation ont,
As it may lose some colour.
With these words directing Roderigo to arouse Brabantio, Iago begins the
action of the play and reveals the depths of his delight in causing and observing
painful suffering.
Act I, i, 8389
Zounds, sir, youre robbd; for shame, put on your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
Arise, I say.
Here is Iago, in his role as author/director of the action of the play, telling
Brabantio what to feel, what to do, what his motivation is, and what action he
must take. To start off his campaign against Othello, Iago rouses Desdemonas
father to let him know his daughter has eloped with Othello. He speaks in
graphically obscene language. Nevertheless, in its raw eloquence it is a linguistic
Key Passages in Othello 25
delight and presents an indelibly defining image of the marriage of Othello and
Desdemona.
Despite what the audience or readers know about Iago, he insinuates himself
into an intimate relationship with them. He charms them as he will Othello
and the other characters in the play. He is full of brio and vitality. When he
refers to the act of sexual intercourse between Othello and Desdemona as an
old black ram / . . . tupping your white ewe, he is, despite his maliciousness,
nearly irresistible, just as he is when he describes them, at line 112, as making
the beast with two backs.
In addition to telling Brabantio what has happened, Iago also instructs him
in how to react and rouses him to heightened feeling, not only with his graphic
obscenity but also by his narration of those feelings, as if he were a director
motivating an actor: Your heart has burst, you have lost your soul. / Even now,
now, very now . . .
Act V, ii, 13
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause.
Othello utters these lines upon entering the bedchamber and finding Desdemona
asleep, with a burning candle by the bed. The vagueness of these three linesin
which it has no reference, cause no specificitygives them a deep emotional
resonance and makes them the likely mantra of a spinning and tormented mind.
What Othello probably means is that Desdemonas infidelity (and not his jeal-
ousy) is the cause of her murder, that this death is a sacrifice and not a revenge
killing.
Act V, ii, 6
Yet she must die, else shell betray more men.
This is a strange thing for Othello to say, for it makes it seem like he is killing
her in order to prevent other men (more men) from having to suffer betrayal
by her as he has. It shows how removed from rationality he has become and how
lost in a tangle of words.
41
LIST OF CHARACTERS IN
OTHELLO
45
OTHELLO
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
1693Thomas Rymer.
From A Short View of Tragedy
Tlorus Ryrer (1641-1713) vus un eurly Englisl critic vlo vrote 7he
7raged|es cj the Last Age (1678) unu A Shcrt v|eu cj 7raged, (1693). Here
Ryrer conuerns Othellc for runy reusons, incluuing its supposeuly
irpluusiEle cluructers.
From all the Tragedies acted on our English Stage, Othello is said to bear the
Bell away. Te Subject is more of a piece, and there is indeed something like,
there is, as it were, some phantom of a Fable. Te Fable is always accounted the
Soul of Tragedy. And it is the Fable which is properly the Poets part. Because the
other three parts of Tragedy, to wit, the Characters are taken from the Moral
Philosopher; the thoughts or sence, from them that teach Rhetorick: And the last
part, which is the expression, we learn from the Grammarians.
Tis Fable is drawn from a Novel, composd in Italian by Giraldi Cinthio,
who also was a Writer of Tragedies. And to that use employd such of his Tales,
as he judged proper for the Stage. But with this of the Moor, he meddld no
farther.
Shakespear alters it from the Original in several particulars, but always,
unfortunately, for the worse. He bestows a name on his Moor; and styles him the
Moor of Venice: a Note of pre-eminence, which neither History nor Heraldry can
allow him. Cinthio, who knew him best, and whose creature he was, calls him
simply a Moor. We say the Piper of Strasburgh; the Jew of Florence; And, if you
please, the Pindar of Wakeeld: all upon Record, and memorable in their Places.
But we see no such Cause for the Moors preferment to that dignity. And it is an
aront to all Chroniclers, and Antiquaries, to top upon urn a Moor, with that
mark of renown, who yet had never fain within the Sphere of their Cognisance.
Ten is the Moors Wife, from a simple Citizen, in Cinthio, dressd up with her
Top knots, and raisd to be Desdemona, a Senators Daughter. All this is very strange;
And therefore pleases such as reect not on the improbability. Tis match might
well be without the Parents Consent. Old Horace long ago forbad the Banes.
Sed non ut placidis Coeant immitia, non ut Serpentes avibus
geminentur, tigribus agni.
Othello 48
The Fable
Othello, a Blackmoor Captain, by talking of his Prowess and Feats of War, makes
Desdemona a Senators Daughter to be in love with him; and to be married to him,
without her Parents knowledge; And having preferred Cassio, to be his Lieutenant,
(a place which his Ensign Jago sued for) Jago in revenge, works the Moor into a
jealousy that Cassio Cuckolds him: which he eects by stealing and conveying a certain
Handkerchief, which had, at the Wedding, been by the Moor presented to his Bride.
Hereupon, Othello and Jago plot the Deaths of Desdemona and Cassio, Othello
Murders her, and soon after is convinced of her Innocence. And as he is about to be
carried to Prison, in order to be punishd for the Murder, He kills himself.
What ever rubs or diculty may stick on the Bark, the Moral, sure, of this
Fable is very instructive.
1. First, Tis may be a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their
Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors.
Di non si accompagnare con huomo, cui la natura & il cielo, & il modo della vita,
disgiunge da noi. Cinthio.
Secondly, Tis may be a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to
their Linnen.
Tirdly, Tis may be a lesson to Husbands, that before their Jealousie be
Tragical, the proofs may be Mathematical.
Cinthio arms that She was not overcome by a Womanish Appetite, but by the
Vertue of the Moor. It must be a good-naturd Reader that takes Cinthios word in
this case, tho in a Novel. Shakespear, who is accountable both to the Eyes, and to
the Ears, And to convince the very heart of an Audience, shews that Desdemona
was won, by hearing Othello talk,
Othello: I spake of most disastrous chances,
of Moving accidents, by ood and eld;
of hair-breadth scapes i th imminent deadly breach;
of being taken by the insolent foe;
and sold to slavery: of my redemption thence;
and portents in my Travels History:
wherein of Antars vast, and Desarts idle,
rough Quarries, Rocks, and Hills, whose heads touch Heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was my process:
and of the Cannibals that each others eat:
the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
do grow beneath their shoulders
Tis was the Charm, this was the philtre, the love-powder that took
the Daughter of this Noble Venetian. Tis was sucient to make the Black-
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 49
amoor White, and reconcile all, tho there had been a Cloven-foot into
the bargain.
A meaner woman might be as soon taken by Aqua Tetrachymagogon.
Nodes, Cataracts, Tumours, Chilblains, Carnosity, Shan-kers, or any Cant in the
Bill of an High-German Doctor is as good fustian Circumstance, and as likely
to charm a Senators Daughter. But, it seems, the noble Venetians have an other
sence of things. Te Doge himself tells us;
Doge: I think this Tale woud win my Daughter too.
Horace tells us,
Intererit Multum
Colchus an Assyrius, Tebis nutritus, an Argis.
Shakespear in this Play calls em the supersubtle Venetians. Yet examine
throughout the Tragedy there is nothing in the noble Desdemona, that is not
below any Countrey Chamber-maid with us.
And the account he gives of their Noblemen and Senate, can only be
calculated for the latitude of Gotham.
Te Character of that State is to employ strangers in their Wars; But shall
a Poet thence fancy that they will set a Negro to be their General; or trust a
Moor to defend them against the Turk? With us a Black-amoor might rise to
be a Trumpeter; but Shakespear would not have him less than a Lieutenant-
General. With us a Moor might marry some little drab, or Small-coal Wench:
Shakespear, would provide him the Daughter and Heir of some great Lord, or
Privy-Councellor: And all the Town should reckon it a very suitable match: Yet
the English are not bred up with that hatred and aversion to the Moors, as are
the Venetians, who suer by a perpetual Hostility from them,
Littora littoribus contraria
Nothing is more odious in Nature than an improbable lye; And, certainly,
never was any Play fraught, like this of Othello, with improbabilities.
Te Characters or Manners, which are the second part in a Tragedy, are not
less unnatural and improper, than the Fable was improbable and absurd.
Othello is made a Venetian General. We see nothing done by him, nor related
concerning him, that comports with the condition of a General, or, indeed, of
a Man, unless the killing himself, to avoid a death the Law was about to inict
upon him. When his Jealousy had wrought him up to a resolution of s taking
revenge for the supposd injury, He sets Jago to the ghting part, to kill Cassio;
Othello 50
And chuses himself to murder the silly Woman his Wife, that was like to make
no resistance.
His Love and his Jealousie are no part of a Souldiers Character, unless for
Comedy.
But what is most intolerable is Jago. He is no Black-amoor Souldier, so we
may be sure he should be like other Souldiers of our acquaintance; yet never in
Tragedy, nor in Comedy, nor in Nature was a Souldier with his Character; take
it in the Authors own words;
Emilia. some Eternal Villain,
Some busie, and insinuating Rogue,
Some cogging, couzening Slave, to get some Oce.
Horace Describes a Souldier otherwise:
Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.
Shakespear knew his Character of Jago was inconsistent. In this very Play he
pronounces,
If thou dost deliver more or less than Truth,
Tou art no Souldier.
Tis he knew, but to entertain the Audience with something new and
surprising, against common sense, and Nature, he would pass upon us a close,
dissembling, false, insinuating rascal, instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain-
dealing Souldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of
years in the World.
Tiberius Caesar
1
had a Poet Arraignd for his Life: because Agamemnon was
brought on the Stage by him, with a character unbecoming a Souldier.
Our Ensigns and Subalterns, when disgusted by the Captain, throw up their
Commissions, bluster, and are bare-facd. Jago, I hope, is not brought on the
Stage, in a Red Coat. I know not what Livery the Venetians wear: but am sure
they hold not these conditions to be alia soldatesca.
Non sia egli per fare la vendetta con insidie, ma con
la spada in mano. (Cinthio.)
Nor is our Poet more discreet in his Desdemona, He had chosen a Souldier for
his Knave: And a Venetian Lady is to be the Fool.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 51
Tis Senators Daughter runs away to (a Carriers Inn) the Sagittary, with a
Black-amoor: is no sooner wedded to him, but the very night she Beds him, is
importuning and teizing him for a young smock-facd Lieutenant, Cassio. And
tho she perceives the Moor Jealous of Cassio, yet will she not forbear, but still
rings Cassio, Cassio in both his Ears.
Roderigo is the Cully of Jago, brought in to be murderd by Jago, that Jagos
hands might be the more in Blood, and be yet the more abominable Villain: who
without that was too wicked on all Conscience; And had more to answer for,
than any Tragedy, or Furies could inict upon him. So there can be nothing in
the characters, either for the prot, or to delight an Audience.
Te third thing to be considerd is the Toughts. But from such Characters, we
need not expect many that are either true, or ne, or noble.
And without these, that is, without sense or meaning, the fourth part of
Tragedy, which is the expression can hardly deserve to be treated on distinctly. Te
verse rumbling in our Ears are of good use to help o the action.
In the Neighing of an Horse, or in the growling of a Masti, there is a
meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity, than many
times in the Tragical ights of Shakespear.
Step then amongst the Scenes to observe the Conduct in this Tragedy.
Te rst we see are Jago and Roderigo, by Night in the Streets of Venice. After
growling a long time together, they resolve to tell Brabantio that his Daughter
is run away with the Black-a-moor. Jago and Roderigo were not of quality to be
familiar with Brabantio, nor had any provocation from him, to deserve a rude
thing at their hands. Brabantio was a Noble Venetian one of the Sovereign Lords,
and principal persons in the Government, Peer to the most Serene Doge, one
attended with more state, ceremony and punctillio, than any English Duke, or
Nobleman in the Government will pretend to. Tis misfortune in his Daughter
is so prodigious, so tender a point, as might puzzle the nest Wit of the most
supersubtle Venetian to touch upon it, or break the discovery to her Father. See
then how delicately Shakespear minces the matter:
Rod.: What ho, Brabantio, Signior Brabantio, ho.
Jago: Awake, what ho, Brabantio,
Tieves, thieves, thieves:
Look to your House, your Daughter, and your Bags
Tieves, thieves.
(Brabantio at a Window.)
Bra.: What is the reason of this terrible summons?
What is the matter there?
Rod.: Signior, is all your Family within?
Jago: Are your Doors lockt?
Othello 52
Bra.: Why, wherefore ask you this?
Jago: Sir, you are robbd, for shame put on your Gown,
Your Heart is burst, you have lost half your Soul,
Even now, very now, an old black Ram
Is tupping your white Ewe: arise, arise,
Awake the snorting Citizens with the Bell,
Or else the Devil will make a Grandsire of you, arise I say.
Jago: Sir, you are one of those that will not serve God, if the Devil bid
you; because we come to do you service, you think us Ruans, youle
have your Daughter covered with a Barbary Stallion. Youle have your
Nephews neigh to you; youle have Coursers for Cousins, and Gennets
for Germans.
Bra.: What prophane wretch art thou?
Jago: I am one, Sir, that come to tell you, your Daughter and the Moor,
are now making the Beast with two backs.
In former days there wont to be kept at the Courts of Princes some body in
a Fools Coat, that in pure simplicity might let slip something, which made way
for the ill news, and blunted the shock, which otherwise might have come too
violent upon the party.
Aristophanes puts Nicias and Demosthenes into the disguise of Servants, that
they might, without indecency, be Drunk; And Drunk he must make them that
they might without reserve lay open the Arcana of State; And the Knavery of
their Ministers.
After King Francis had been taken Prisoner at Pavia, Rabelais tells of a
Drunken bout between Gargantua and Fryer John; where the valiant Fryer,
bragging over his Cups, amongst his other ights, says he, Had I livd in the days
of Jesus Christ, I would ha guarded Mount Olivet that the Jews should never ha tane
him. Te Devil fetch me, if I would not have ham stringd those Mr. Apostles, that after
their good Supper, ran away so scurvily and left their Master to shift for himself. I hate
a Man should run away, when he should play at sharps. Pox ont, that I shoud not be
King of France for an hundred years or two. I woud curtail all our French Dogs that
ran away at Pavia.
Tis is address, this is truly Satyr, where the preparation is such, that the thing
principally designd, falls in, as it only were of course.
But Shakespear shews us another sort of address, his manners and good
breeding must not be like the rest of the Civil World. Brabantio was not in
Masquerade, was not incognito; Jago well knew his rank and dignity.
Jago: Te Magnico is much beloved,
And hath in his eect, a voice potential
As double as the Duke
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 53
But besides the Manners to a Magnico, humanity cannot bear that an old
Gentleman in his misfortune should be insulted over with such a rabble of
Skoundrel language, when no cause or provocation. Yet thus it is on our Stage,
this is our School of good manners, and the Speculum Vitae.
But our Magnif ico is here in the dark, nor are yet his Robes on: attend
him to the Senate house, and there see the dierence, see the eects of
Purple.
So, by and by, we nd the Duke of Venice with his Senators in Councel, at
Midnight, upon advice that the Turks, or Ottamites, or both together, were
ready in transport Ships, put to Sea, in order to make a Descent upon Cyprus.
Tis is the posture, when we see Brabantio, and Othello join them. By their
Conduct and manner of talk, a body must strain hard to fancy the Scene at
Venice; And not rather in some of our Cinq-ports, where the Baily and his
Fisher-men are knocking their heads together on account of some Whale;
or some terrible broil upon the Coast. But to shew them true Venetians, the
Maritime aairs stick not long on their hand; the publick may sink or swim.
Tey will sit up all night to hear a Doctors Commons, Matrimonial, Cause.
And have the Merits of the Cause at large laid open to em, that they may
decide it before they Stir. What can be pleaded to keep awake their attention
so wonderfully?
Never, sure, was form of pleading so tedious and so heavy, as this whole Scene,
and midnight entertainment. Take his own words: says the Respondent.
Oth.: Most potent, grave, and reverend Signiors,
My very noble, and approvd good Masters:
Tat I have tane away this old mans Daughter;
It is most true: true, I have Married her,
Te very front and head of my oending,
Hath this extent, no more: rude I am in my speech.
And little blest with the set phrase of peace,
For since these Arms of mine had seven years pith,
Till now some nine Moons wasted, they have usd
Teir dearest action in the Tented Field:
And little of this great World can I speak,
More than pertains to Broils and Battail,
And therefore little shall I grace my Cause,
In speaking of my self; yet by your gracious patience
I would a round unravishd Tale deliver,
Of my whole course of love, what drugs, what charms
What Conjuration, and what mighty Magick,
(for such proceedings am I chargd withal)
I won his Daughter.
Othello 54
All this is but Preamble, to tell the Court that He wants words. Tis was the
Eloquence which kept them up all Night, and drew their attention, in the midst
of their alarms.
One might rather think the novelty, and strangeness of the case prevaild
upon them: no, the Senators do not reckon it strange at all. Instead of starting
at the Prodigy, every one is familiar with Desdemona, as he were her own natural
Father, rejoice in her good fortune, and wish their own several Daughters as
hopefully married. Should the Poet have provided such a Husband for an only
Daughter of any noble Peer in England, the Black-amoor must have changd his
Skin, to look our House of Lords in the Face.
Aeschylus is noted in Aristophanes for letting Niobe be two or three Acts on
the Stage, before she speaks. Our Noble Venetian, sure, is in the other more
unnatural extreme. His words ow in abundance; no Butter-Quean can be more
lavish. Nay: he is for talking of State-Aairs too, above any body:
Bra.: Please it your Grace, on to the State Aairs
Yet is this Brabantio sensible of his aiction; before the end of the Play his
Heart breaks, he dies.
Gra.: Poor Desdemona, I am glad thy Fathers dead,
Ty match was mortal to him, and pure grief
Shore his old thread in twain
A third part in a Tragedy is the Toughts: from Venetians, Noblemen, and
Senators, we may expect ne Toughts. Here is a tryal of skill: for a parting blow,
the Duke, and Brabantio Cap sentences. Where then shall we seek for the thoughts,
if we let slip this occasion? says the Duke:
Duke: Let me speak like your self and lay a Sentence,
Which like a greese or step, may help these lovers
Into your favour.
When remedies are past the grief is ended,
By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended,
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
Is the next way to draw more mischief on;
What cannot be preservd when Fortune takes,
Patience her injury a Mocker makes.
Te robd that smiles, steals something from a Tief,
He robs himself, that spends an hopeless grief.
Bra.: So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile
We lose it not so long as we can smile;
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 55
He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears,
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow,
Tat to pay grief must of poor patience borrow:
Tese Sentences to Sugar, or to Gall,
Being strong on both sides are equivocal.
But words are words, I never yet did hear,
Tat the bruisd Heart was pierced through the Ear.
Beseech you now to the aairs of State.
How far woud the Queen of Sheba have travelld to hear the Wisdom of our
Noble Venetians? or is not our Brentford a Venetian Colony, for methinks their
talk is the very same?
What says Prince Volscius?
Volscius: What shall I do, what conduct shall I nd
To lead me through this twy light of my mind?
What says Amaryllis?
Ama.: I hope its slow beginning will portend
A forward exit to all future end.
What says Prince Pretty-man?
Pre.: Was ever Son yet brought to this distress,
To be, for being a Son, made Fatherless?
Ah, you just gods, rob me not of a Father,
Te being of a Son take from me rather.
Panurge, sadly perplexed, and trying all the means in the World, to be well
advised, in that knotty point whether he should Marry, or no; Amongst the rest,
consults Raminigrobis, an old Poet; as one belonging to Apollo; And from whom
he might expect something like an Oracle. And he was not disappointed. From
Raminigrobis he had this Answer:
Prenez la, ne la prenez pas.
Si vous la prenez, cest bien fait.
Si ne la prenez, en eet
Ce sera ouvre par compas.
Gallopez, mais allez le pas.
Recullez, entrs y de fait.
Othello 56
Prenez la, ne.
Take, or not take her, o or on:
Handy dandy is your Lot.
When her name you write, you blot.
Tis undone, when all is done,
Ended, ere it is begun.
Never Gallop whilst you Trot.
Set not forward, when you run,
Nor be single, tho alone,
Take, or not take her, o, or on.
What provocation, or cause of malice our Poet might have to Libel the
most Serene Republick, I cannot tell: but certainly, there can be no wit in this
representation.
For the Second Act, our Poet having dispatcht his aairs at Venice, shews the
Action next (I know not how many leagues o) in the Island of Cyprus. Te
Audience must be there too: And yet our Bays had it never in his head, to make
any provision of Transport Ships for them.
In the days that the Old Testament was Acted in Clerkenwell, by the Parish
Clerks of London, the Israelites might pass through the Red sea: but alass, at this
time, we have no Moses to bid the Waters make way, and to Usher us along. Well,
the absurdities of this kind break no Bones. Tey may make Fools of us; but do
not hurt our Morals.
Come a-shoar then, and observe the Countenance of the People, after the
dreadful Storm, and their apprehensions from an Invasion by the Ottomites,
their succour and friends scatterd and tost, no body knew whither. Te
rst that came to Land was Cassio, his rst Salutation to the Governour,
Montanio, is:
Cas.: Tanks to the valiant of this Isle:
Tat so approve the Moor, and let the Heavens
Give him defence against their Elements,
For I have lost him on the dangerous Sea.
To him the Governour speaks, indeed, like a Man in his wits.
Mont.: Is he well Shipt?
Te Lieutenant answers thus.
Cas.: His Bark is stoutly Tymberd, and his Pilot
Of very expert, and approvd allowance,
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 57
Terefore my hopes (not surfeited to death)
Stand in bold care.
Te Governours rst question was very proper; his next question, in this
posture of aairs, is:
Mont.: But, good Lieutenant, is our general Wivd?
A question so remote, so impertinent and absurd, so odd and surprising never
entered Bayess Pericranium. Only the answer may Tally with it.
Cas.: Most fortunately, he hath atcheivd a Maid,
Tat Parragons description, and wild fame:
One that excels the quirks of blasoning Pens:
And in the essential vesture of Creation,
Does bear an excellency
Tey who like this Authors writing will not be oended to nd so much
repeated from him. I pretend not here to tax either the Sense, or the Language;
those Circumstances had their proper place in the Venetian Senate. What I now
cite is to shew how probable, how natural, how reasonable the Conduct is, all
along.
I thought it enough that Cassio should be acquainted with a Virgin of that
rank and consideration in Venice, as Desdemona. I wondred that in the Senate-
house every one should know her so familiarly: yet, here also at Cyprus, every
body is in a rapture at the name of Desdemona: except only Montanio who must
be ignorant; that Cassio, who has an excellent cut in shaping an Answer, may
give him the satisfaction:
Mont.: What is she?
Cas.: She that I spoke of: our Captains Captain,
Left in the Conduct of the bold Jago,
Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts
A Sennets speed: great Jove Othello guard,
And swell his Sail with thine own powerful breath,
Tat he may bless this Bay with his Tall Ship,
And swiftly come to Desdemonas Arms,
Give renewed re to our extincted Spirits,
And bring all Cyprus comfort:
(Enter Desdemona, &c.)
O behold,
Te riches of the Ship is come on shoar.
Othello 58
Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your Knees:
Hail to the Lady: and the Grace of Heaven
Before, behind thee, and on every hand.
Enwheel the round
In the name of phrenzy, what means this Souldier? or would he talk thus, if
he meant any thing at all? Who can say Shakespear is to blame in his Character of
a Souldier? Has he not here done him reason? When coud our Tramontains talk
at this rate? but our Jarsey and Garnsey Captains must not speak so ne things,
nor compare with the Mediterranean, or Garrisons in Rhodes and Cyprus.
Te next thing our Ocer does, is to salute Jagos Wife, with this Conge to
the Husband,
Cas.: Good Ancient, you are welcome, welcome Mistriss,
Let it not Gall your Patience, good Jago,
Tat I extend my Manners, tis my Breeding,
Tat gives me this bold shew of Curtesy.
Jago: Sir, would she give you so much of her lips,
As of her tongue she has bestowd on me,
Youd have enough.
Desd. Alass! she has no speech.
Now follows a long rabble of Jack-pudden farce betwixt Jago and Desdemona,
that runs on with all the little plays, jingle, and trash below the patience of any
Countrey Kitchin-maid with her Sweet-heart. Te Venetian Donna is hard put
tot for pastime! And this is all, when they are newly got on shoar, from a dismal
Tempest, and when every moment she might expect to hear her Lord (as she
calls him) that she runs so mad after, is arrivd or lost. And moreover.
In a Town of War,
the peoples Hearts brimful of fear.
Never in the World had any Pagan Poet his Brains tumd at this Monstrous
rate. But the ground of all this Bedlam-Buoonry we saw, in the case of the
French Strolers, the Company for Acting Christs Passion, or the Old Testament,
were Carpenters, Coblers, and illiterate fellows; who found that the Drolls, and
Fooleries interlarded by them, brought in the rabble, and lengthened their time,
so they got Money by the bargain.
Our Shakespear, doubtless, was a great Master in this craft. Tese Carpenters
and Coblers were the guides he followed. And it is then no wonder that we nd
so much farce and Apochryphal Matter in his Tragedies. Tereby un-hallowing
the Teatre, profaning the name of Tragedy; And instead of representing Men
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 59
and Manners, turning all Morality, good sence, and humanity into mockery
and derision.
But pass we to something of a more serious air and Complexion. Othello and
his Bride are the rst Night, no sooner warm in Bed together, but a Drunken
Quarrel happening in the Garison, two Souldiers Fight; And the General rises
to part the Fray: He swears.
Oth.: Now by Heaven,
My blood begins my safer guides to rule,
And passion, having my best judgment coold,
Assays to lead the way: if once I stir,
Or do but lift this arm, the best of you
Shall sink in my rebuke: give me to know
How this foul rout began; who set it on,
And he that is approvd in this oence,
To he had rwind with me both at a birth,
Should lose me: what, in a Town of War,
Yet wild, the peoples Hearts brimful of fear,
To manage private, and domestick quarrels,
In Night, and on the Court, and guard of safety,
Tis Monstrous, Jago, who began?
In the days of yore, Souldiers did not swear in this fashion. What should a
Souldier say farther, when he swears, unless he blaspheme? action shoud speak
the rest. What follows must be ex oregladii; He is to rap out an Oath, not With-
draw and Spin it out: by the style one might judge that Shakespears Souldiers
were never bred in a Camp, but rather had belongd to some Adavit-Oce.
Consider also throughout this whole Scene, how the Moorish General proceeds
in examining into this Rout; No Justice Clod-pate could go on with more Phlegm
and deliberation. Te very rst night that he lyes with the Divine Desdemona to be
thus interrupted, might provoke a Mans Christian Patience to swear in another
style. But a Negro General is a Man of strange Mettle. Only his Venetian Bride
is a match for him. She understands that the Souldiers in the Garison are by th
ears together: And presently she at midnight, is in amongst them.
Desd.: Whats the matter there?
Othel.: Alls well now Sweeting
Come away to Bed
In the beginning of this second Act, before they had lain together, Desdemona
was said to be, our Captains Captain; Now they are no sooner in Bed together,
but Jago is advising Cassio in these words.
Othello 60
Jago: Our Generals Wife is now the General, I may say so in this
respect, for that he hath devoted, and given up himself to the
contemplation, mark, and devotement of her parts and graces. Confess
your self freely to her, importune her; shell help to put you in your
place again: she is so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition,
that she holds it a vice in her goodness, not to do more than she is
requested. Tis broken joint between you and her Husband, intreat her
to splinter
And he says afterwards.
Jago: Tis most easie
Te inclining Desdemona to subdue,
In any honest suit. Shes framd as fruitful,
As the free Elements: And then for her
To win the Moor, weret to renounce his Baptism,
All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,
His soul is so enfetterd to her love,
Tat she may make, unmake, do what she list:
Even as her appetite shall play the God
With his weak function
Tis kind of discourse implies an experience and long conversation, the
Honey-Moon over, and a Marriage of some standing. Would any man, in
his wits, talk thus of a Bridegroom and Bride the rst night of their coming
together?
Yet this is necessary for our Poet; it would not otherwise serve his turn. Tis
is the source, the foundation of his Plot; hence is the spring and occasion for all
the Jealousie and bluster that ensues.
Nor are we in better circumstances for Roderigo. Te last thing said by him
in the former Act was,
Rod.: Ill go sell all my Land.
A fair Estate is sold to put money in his Purse, for this adventure. And lo here,
the next day.
Rod.: I do follow here in the Chace, not like a Hound that hunts, but
one that lls up the cry: My Money is almost spent. I have been tonight
exceedingly well cudgelld, I think the issue will be, I shall have so much
experience for my pains, and so no Money at all, and with a little more
wit return to Venice.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 61
Te Venetian squire had a good riddance for his Acres. Te Poet allows him
just time to be once drunk, a very conscionable reckoning!
In this Second Act, the face of aairs could in truth be no other, than
in a Town of War,
Yet wild, the peoples Hearts brim-ful of fear.
But nothing either in this Act, or in the rest that follow, shew any colour or
complexion, any resemblance or proportion to that face and posture it ought to
bear. Should a Painter draw any one Scene of this Play, and write over it, Tis is a
Town of War; would any body believe that the Man were in his senses? would not
a Goose, or Dromedary for it, be a name as just and suitable? And what in Painting
would be absurd, can never pass upon the World of Poetry.
Cassio having escaped the Storm comes on shoar at Cyprus, that night gets
Drunk, Fights, is turnd out from his Command, grows sober again, takes advice
how to be restord, is all Repentance and Mortication: yet before he sleeps, is
in the Morning at his Generals door with a noise of Fiddles, and a Droll to
introduce him to a little Mouth-speech with the Bride.
Cassio: Give me advantage of some brief discourse
With Desdemona alone.
Em.: Pray you come in,
I will bestow you, where you shall have time
To speak your bosom freely.
So, they are put together: And when he had gone on a good while speaking
his bosom, Desdemona answers him.
Desd.: Do not doubt that, before Emilia here,
I give thee warrant of thy place; assure thee,
If I do vow a friendship, Ill perform it,
To the last article
Ten after a ribble rabble of fulsome impertinence, She is at her Husband
slap dash:
Desd.: Good love, call him back.
Othel.: Not now, sweet Desdemona, some other time.
Desd.: But shallt shortly?
Othel: Te sooner, sweet, for you.
Desd.: Shallt be to-night at Supper?
Othel: No, not tonight.
Othello 62
Desd.: To-morrow Dinner then?
Othel. I shall not dine at home,
I meet the Captains at the Citadel.
Desd.: Why then to morrow night, or Tuesday morn,
Or night, or Wednesday morn?
After forty lines more, at this rate, they part, and then comes the wonderful
Scene, where Jago by shrugs, half words, and ambiguous reections, works Othello
up to be Jealous. One might think, after what we have seen, that there needs
no great cunning, no great poetry and address to make the Moor Jealous. Such
impatience, such a rout for a handsome young fellow, the very morning after her
Marriage must make him either to be jealous, or to take her for a Changeling,
below his Jealousie. After this Scene, it might strain the Poets skill to reconcile
the couple, and allay the Jealousie. Jago now can only actum agere, and vex the
audience with a nauseous repetition.
Whence comes it then, that this is the top scene, the Scene that raises Othello
above all other Tragedies on our Teatres? It is purely from the Action; from the
Mops and the Mows, the Grimace, the Grins and Gesticulation. Such scenes as
this have made all the World run after Harlequin and Scaramuccio.
Te several degrees of Action were amongst the Ancients distinguishd by the
Cothurnus, the Soccus, and by the Planipes.
Had this scene been represented at old Rome, Othello and Jago must have
quitted their Buskins; Tey must have played bare-foot: the spectators would not
have been content without seeing their Podometry; And the Jealousie work at
the very Toes of em. Words, be they Spanish, or Polish, or any inarticulate sound,
have the same eect, they can only serve to distinguish, and, as it were, beat time
to the Action. But here we see a known Language does wofully encumber, and
clog the operation: as either forcd, or heavy, or triing, or incoherent, or improper,
or most what improbable. When no words interpose to spoil the conceipt, every
one interprets as he likes best. So in that memorable dispute betwixt Panurge
and our English Philosopher in Rabelais, performd without a word speaking;
Te Teologians, Physicians, and Surgeons, made one inference; the Lawyers,
Civilians, and Canonists, drew another conclusion more to their mind.
Othello the night of his arrival at Cyprus, is to consummate with Desdemona,
they go to Bed. Both are raisd and run into the Town amidst the Souldiers that
were a ghting: then go to Bed again, that morning he sees Cassio with her; She
importunes him to restore Cassio. Othello shews nothing of the Souldiers Mettle:
but like a tedious, drawling, tame Goose, is gaping after any paultrey insinuation,
labouring to be jealous; And catching at every blown surmize.
Jago: My Lord, I see you are moved.
Oth.: No, not much moved.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 63
Do not think but Desdemona is honest.
Jago: Long live she so, and long live you to think so.
Oth.: And yet how Nature erring from it self,
Jago: I, Teres the point: as to be bold with you,
Not to aect many proposed Matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Wherein we see, in all things. Nature tends,
Fye, we may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural
Te Poet here is certainly in the right, and by consequence the foundation
of the Play must be concluded to be Monstrous; And the constitution, all over,
to be
most rank,
Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.
Which instead of moving pity, or any passion Tragical and Reasonable,
can produce nothing but horror and aversion, and what is odious and grievous
to an Audience. After this fair Mornings work, the Bride enters, drops a
Cursey.
Desd.: How now, my dear Othello,
Your Dinner, and the generous Islanders
By you invited, do attend your presence.
Oth.: I am to blame.
Desd.: Why is your speech so faint? Are you not well.
Oth.: I have a pain upon my Fore-head, dear.
Michael Cassio came not from Venice in the Ship with Desdemona, nor till this
Morning could be suspected of an opportunity with her. And tis now but Dinner
time; yet the Moor complains of his Fore-head. He might have set a Guard on
Cassio, or have lockt up Desdemona, or have observd their carriage a day or two
longer. He is on other occasions phlegmatick enough: this is very hasty. But after
Dinner we have a wonderful ight:
Othel.: What sense had I of her stoln hours of lust?
I sawt not, thought it not, it harmd not me:
I slept the next night well, was free and merry,
I found not Cassios kisses on her lips
A little after this, says he,
Othello 64
Oth.: Give me a living reason that shes disloyal.
Jago: I lay with Cassio lately,
And being troubled with a raging Tooth, I could not sleep;
Tere are a kind of men so loose of Soul,
Tat in their sleeps will mutter their aairs,
One of this kind is Cassio:
In sleep I heard him say: sweet Desdemona,
Let us be wary, let us hide our loves:
And then, Sir, woud he gripe, and wring my hand,
Cry out, sweet Creature; and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluckt up kisses by the roots,
Tat grew upon my Lips, then laid his Leg
Over my Tigh, and sighd, and kissd, and then
Cryd, cursed fate, that gave thee to the Moor.
By the Rapture of Othello, one might think that he raves, is not of sound
Memory, forgets that he has not yet been two nights in the Matrimonial Bed
with his Desdemona. But we nd Jago, who should have a better memory, forging
his lies after the very same Model. Te very night of their Marriage at Venice, the
Moor, and also Cassio, were sent away to Cyprus. In the Second Act, Othello and
his Bride go the rst time to Bed; Te Tird Act opens the next morning. Te
parties have been in view to this moment. We saw the opportunity which was
given for Cassio to speak his bosom to her; once, indeed, might go a great way with
a Venetian. But once, will not do the Poets business; Te Audience must suppose
a great many bouts, to make the plot operate. Tey must deny their senses, to
reconcile it to common sense: or make it any way consistent, and hang together.
Nor, for the most part, are the single thoughts more consistent, than is the
economy: Te Indians do as they ought in painting the Devil White: but says
Othello:
Oth.: Her name that was as fresh
As Dions Visage, is now begrimd and black,
As mine own face
Tere is not a Monky but understands Nature better; not a Pug in Barbary
that has not a truer taste of things.
Othel.: O now for ever
Farewel the tranquil mind, farewel content;
Farewel the plumed troop, and the big Wars,
Tat make Ambition Vertue: O farewel,
Farewel the neighing Steed, and the shrill Trump,
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 65
Te spirit stirring Drum, th ear-piercing Fief,
Te royal Banner, and all quality,
Pride, Pomp, and Circumstance of glorious War,
And O ye Mortal Engines, whose wide throats
T immortal Joves great clamours counterfeit,
Farewel, Othellos occupations gone.
Tese lines are recited here, not for any thing Poetical in them, besides the
sound, that pleases. Yet this sort of imagery and amplication is extreamly taking,
where it is just and natural. As in Gorboduck, when a young Princess on whose fancy
the personal gallantry of the Kings Son then slain, had made a strong impression,
thus, out of the abundance of her imagination, pours forth her grief:
Marcella: Ah noble Prince! how oft have I beheld
Tee mounted on thy erce, and trampling Steed,
Shining in Armour bright before the Tilt,
Wearing thy Mistress sleeve tyd on thy helm.
Ten charge thy sta, to please thy Ladies Eye,
Tat bowd the head piece of thy friendly Foe?
How oft in arms, on Horse to bend the Mace,
How oft in arms, on foot, to break the Spear;
Which never now these Eyes may see agen?
Notwithstanding that this Scene had proceeded with fury and bluster
sucient to make the whole Isle ring of his Jealousy, yet is Desdemona diverting
her self with a paultry buoon and only solicitous in quest of Cassio.
Desd.: Seek him, bid him come hither, tell him
Where shoud I lose that Handkerchief, Emilia?
Believe me I had rather lose my Purse,
Full of Crusados: And but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,
As Jealous Creatures are; it were enough
To put him to ill thinking.
Em.: Is he not Jealous?
Desd.: Who he? I think the Sun, where he was born,
Drew all such humours from him.
By this manner of speech one woud gather the couple had been yoakd
together a competent while, what might she say more, had they cohabited, and
had been Man and Wife seven years?
She spies the Moor.
Othello 66
Desd.: I will not leave him now,
Till Cassio is recalld.
I have sent to bid Cassio come speak with you.
Othel: Lend me thy Handkerchief.
Desd.: Tis is a trick to put me from my suit.
I pray let Cassio be receivd agen.
Em.: Is not this man Jealous?
tis not a year or two shews us a man
As if for the rst year or two, Othello had not been jealous? Te third Act begins
in the morning, at noon she drops the Handkerchief, after dinner she misses it,
and then follows all this outrage and horrible clutter about it. If we believe a small
Damosel in the last Scene of this Act, this day is eectually seven days.
Bianca: What keep a week away! seven days,
seven nights,
Eightscore eight hours, and lovers absent hours,
More tedious than the Dial eightscore times.
O weary reckoning!
Our Poet is at this plunge, that whether this Act contains the compass of
one day, of seven days, or of seven years, or of all together, the repugnance and
absurdity would be the same. For Othello, all the while, has nothing to say or to
do, but what loudly proclaim him jealous: her friend and condent Emilia again
and again rounds her in the Ear that the Man is Jealous: yet this Venetian dame
is neither to see, nor to hear; nor to have any sense or understanding, nor to strike
any other note but Cassio, Cassio.
Te Scotchman hearing trut Scot, trut Scot, when he saw it came from a Bird,
checkt his Choler, and put up his Swerd again, with a Braad O God, G. Ifthaadst
ben a Maan, as th art ane Green Geuse, I sud ha stuck tha to thin heart. Desdemona
and that Parrot might pass for Birds of a Feather; and if Sauney had not been
more generous than Othello, but continued to insult the poor Creature after this
beastly example, he would have given our Poet as good stu to work upon: And
his Tragedy of the Green Geuse, might have deservd a better audience, than this of
Desdemona, or Te Moor of Venice.
Act IV
Enter Jago and Othello
Jago: Will you think so?
Othel: Tink so, Jago.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 67
Jago: What, to kiss in private?
Othel: An unauthorised kiss.
Jago: Or to be naked with her friend a-bed,
An hour or more, not meaning any harm?
Othel.: Naked a-bed, Jago, and not mean harm?
At this gross rate of triing, our General and his Auncient March on most
heroically; till the Jealous Booby has his Brains turnd; and falls in a Trance.
Would any imagine this to be the Language of Venetians, of Souldiers, and
mighty Captains? no Bartholomew Droll coud subsist upon such trash. But lo, a
Stratagem never presented in Tragedy.
Jago: Stand you a while a part
Incave your self;
And mark the Jeers, the Gibes, and notable scorns,
Tat dwell in every region of his face,
For I will make him tell the tale a new,
Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when
He has, and is again to Cope your Wife:
I say, but mark his gesture
With this device Othello withdraws. Says Jago aside.
Jago: Now will I question Cassio of Bianca,
A Huswife
Tat doats on Cassio
He when he hears of her cannot refrain
From the excess of Laughter
As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad,
And his unbookish jealousy must conster
Poor Cassios smiles, gesture, and light behaviour
Quite in the wrong
So to work they go: And Othello is as wise a commentator, and makes his
applications pat, as heart coud wishbut I woud not expect to nd this Scene
acted nearer than in Southwark Fair. But the Hankerchief is brought in at last, to
stop all holes, and close the evidence. So now being satised with the proof, they
come to a resolution, that the oenders shall be murdered.
Othel: But yet the pity of it, Jago, ah the pity.
Jago: If you be so fond over her iniquity give her
Othello 68
Patent to oend. For if it touches not you, it comes near no Body.
Do it not with poison, strangle her in her Bed; Even the Bed she has
contaminated.
Oth.: Good, good, the Justice of it pleases, very good.
Jago: And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker
Jago had some pretence to be discontent with Othello and Cassio: And what
passed hitherto, was the operation of revenge. Desdemona had never done him
harm, always kind to him, and to his Wife; was his Country-woman, a Dame
of quality: for him to abet her Murder, shews nothing of a Souldier, nothing
of a Man, nothing of Nature in it. Te Ordinary of Newgate never had the
like Monster to pass under his examination. Can it be any diversion to see a
Rogue beyond what the Devil ever nishd? Or woud it be any instruction to
an Audience? Jago coud desire no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his two
Enemies, by the Ears together; so he might have been revengd on them both
at once: And chusing for his own share, the Murder of Desdemona, he had the
opportunity to play booty, and save the poor harmless wretch. But the Poet
must do every thing by contraries: to surprize the Audience still with something
horrible and prodigious, beyond any human imagination. At this rate he must
out-do the Devil, to be a Poet in the rank with Shakespear.
Soon after this, arrives from Venice, Ludovico, a noble Cousin of Desdemona,
presently she is at him also, on the behalf of Cassio.
Desd.: Cousin theres fallen between him and my
Lord An unkind breach, but you shall make all well.
Lud.: Is there division twixt my Lord and Cassio.
Desd.: A most unhappy one, I woud do much
To attone them, for the love I bear to Cassio.
By this time, we are to believe the couple have been a week or two Married:
And Othellos Jealousie that had ragd so loudly, and had been so uneasie to
himself, must have reachd her knowledge. Te Audience have all heard him more
plain with her, than was needful to a Venetian capacity: And yet she must still be
impertinent in her suit for Cassio, well, this Magnico comes from the Doge, and
Senators, to displace Othello.
Lud.: Deputing Cassio in his Government.
Desd.: Trust me, I am glad ont.
Oth.: Indeed.
Desd.: My Lord.
Oth.: I am glad to see you mad.
Desd.: How, sweet Othello.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 69
Oth.: Devil.
Desd.: I have not deserved this.
Oth.. O Devil, Devil
Out of my sight.
Desd.: I will not stay to oend you.
Lud.: Truly, an obedient Lady.
I do beseech your Lordship call her back.
Oth.: Mistress.
Desd.: My Lord.
Oth.: What would you with her sir?
Lud.: Who, I, my Lord?
Oth.: I, you did wish that I woud make her turn.
Sir, she can turn, and turn, and yet go on,
And turn agen, and she can weep, Sir, weep.
And she is obedient, as you say, obedient:
Very obedient
Lud.: What strike your Wife?
Of what esh and blood does our Poet make these noble Venetians? the men
without Gall; the Women without either Brains or Sense? A Senators Daughter
runs away with this Black-amoor; the Government employs this Moor to defend
them against the Turks, so resent not the Moors Marriage at present, but the
danger over, her Father gets the Moor Cashierd, sends his Kinsman, Seignior
Ludovico, to Cyprus with the Commission for a new General; who, at his arrival,
nds the Moor calling the Lady his Kinswoman, Whore and Strumpet, and
kicking her: what says the Magnico?
Lud.: My Lord this would not be believd in Venice,
To I shoud swear I sawt, tis very much;
Make her amends: she weeps.
Te Moor has no body to take his part, no body of his Colour: Ludovico has
the new Governour Cassio, and all his Countrymen Venetians about him. What
Poet woud give a villanous Black-amoor this Ascendant? What Tramontain
could fancy the Venetians so low, so despicable, or so patient? this outrage to an
injurd Lady, the Divine Desdemona, might in a colder Climate have provoked
some body to be her Champion: but the Italians may well conclude we have a
strange Genius for Poetry. In the next Scene Othello is examining the supposed
Bawd; then follows another storm of horrour and outrage against the poor
Chicken, his Wife. Some Drayman or drunken Tinker might possibly treat his
drab at this sort of rate, and mean no harm by it: but for his excellency, a My
lord General, to Serenade a Senators Daughter with such a volly of scoundrel
Othello 70
lthy Language, is sure the most absurd Maggot that ever bred from any Poets
addle Brain.
And she is in the right, who tells us,
Emil.: A Begger in his Drink,
Coud not have laid such terms upon his Callet.
Tis is not to describe passion. Seneca had another notion in the Case:
Parvae loquuntur curae, ingentes stupent.
And so had the Painter, who drew Agamemnon with his Face covered. Yet
to make all worse, her Murder, and the manner of it, had before been resolvd
upon and concerted. But nothing is to provoke a Venetian; she takes all in good
part; had the Scene lain in Russia, what coud we have expected more? With us a
Tinkers Trull woud be Nettled, woud repartee with more spirit, and not appear
so void of spleen.
Desd.: O good Jago,
What shall I do to win my Lord agen?
No Woman bred out of a Pig-stye, coud talk so meanly. After this,
she is calld to Supper with Othello, Ludovico, &c. after that comes a lthy
sort of Pastoral Scene, where the Wedding Sheets, and Song of Willow, and
her Mothers Maid, poor Barbara, are not the least moving things in this
entertainment. But that we may not be kept too long in the dumps, nor the
melancholy Scenes lye too heavy, undigested on our Stomach, this Act gives us
for a farewell, the salsa, O picante, some quibbles, and smart touches, as Ovid
had Prophecied:
Est & in obscenos deexa Tragoedia risus.
Te last Act begins with Jago and Roderigo; Who a little before had been upon
the hu:
Rod.: I say it is not very well: I will make my self known to Desdemona;
if she will return me my Jewels, I will give over my suit, and repent my
unlawful sollicitation, if not, assure your self, Ill seek satisfaction of you.
Roderigo, a Noble Venetian had sought Desdemona in Marriage, is troubled to
nd the Moor had got her from him, advises with Jago, who wheadles him to sell
his Estate, and go over the Sea to Cyprus, in expectation to Cuckold Othello, there
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 71
having cheated Roderigo of all his Money and Jewels, on pretence of presenting
them to Desdemona, our Gallant grows angry, and would have satisfaction from
Jago; who sets all right, by telling him Cassio is to be Governour, Othello is going
with Desdemona into Mauritania: to prevent this, you are to murder Cassio, and
then all may be well.
Jago: He goes into Mauritania, and takes with him the fair Desdemona,
unless his abode be lingred here by some accident, wherein none can be
so determinate, as the removing of Cassio.
Had Roderigo been one of the Banditi, he might not much stick at the
Murder. But why Roderigo should take this for payment, and risque his person
where the prospect of advantage is so very uncertain and remote, no body can
imagine. It had need be a super-subtle Venetian that this Plot will pass upon. Ten
after a little spurt of villany and Murder, we are brought to the most lamentable,
that ever appeard on any Stage. A noble Venetian Lady is to be murdered by our
Poet; in sober sadness, purely for being a Fool. No Pagan Poet but woud have
found some Machine for her deliverance. Pegasus woud have straind hard to have
brought old Perseus on his back, time enough, to rescue this Andromeda from
so foul a Monster. Has our Christian Poetry no generosity, nor bowels? Ha, Sir
Lancelot! ha St. George! will no Ghost leave the shades for us in extremity, to save
a distressed Damosel?
But for our comfort, however felonious is the Heart, hear with what soft
language, he does approach her, with a Candle in his Hand:
Oth.: Put out the light and then put out the light;
If I quench thee, thou aming Minister,
I can again thy former light restore
Who would call him a Barbarian, Monster, Savage? Is this a Black-amoor?
Soles occidere & redire possunt
Te very Soul and Quintessence of Sir George Etheridge.
One might think the General should not glory much in this action, but
make an hasty work ont, and have turnd his Eyes away from so unsouldierly
an Execution: yet is he all pause and deliberation; handles her as calmly: and
is as careful of her Souls health, as it had been her Father Confessor. Have you
prayed to Night, Desdemona? But the suspence is necessary, that he might
have a convenient while so to roul his Eyes, and so to gnaw his nether lip to the
spectators. Besides the greater crueltysub tarn lentis maxillis.
But hark, a most tragical thing laid to her charge.
Othello 72
Oth.: Tat Handkerchief, that I so lovd, and gave thee,
Tou gavst to Cassio.
Desd.: No by my Life and Soul;
Send for the man and ask him.
Oth.: By Heaven, I saw my Handkerchief in his hand
I saw the Handkerchief.
So much ado, so much stress, so much passion and repetition about an
Handkerchief! Why was not this calld the Tragedy of the Handkerchief? What can
be more absurd than (as Quintilian expresses it) in parvis litibus has Tragoedias
movere? We have heard of Fortunatus his Purse, and of the Invisible Cloak, long
ago worn thread bare, and stowd up in the Wardrobe of obsolete Romances: one
might think, that were a tter place for this Handkerchief, than that it, at this
time of day, be worn on the Stage, to raise every where all this clutter and turmoil.
Had it been Desdemonas Garter, the Sagacious Moor might have smelt a Rat: but
the Handkerchief is so remote a trie, no Booby, on this side Mauritania, coud
make any consequence from it.
We may learn here, that a Woman never loses her Tongue, even tho after she
is stid.
Desd.: O falsly, falsly murderd.
Em.: Sweet Desdemona, O sweet Mistress, speak.
Desd.: A guiltless death I dye.
Em.: O who has done the deed?
Desd.: No body, I my self, farewel.
Commend me to my kind Lord, O farewel.
Tis Desdemona is a black swan; or an old Black-amoor is a bewitching
Bed-fellow. If this be Nature, it is a laschete below what the English Language
can express.
For Lardella, to make love, like an Humble Bee, was, in the Rehearsal, thought
a fancy odd enough.
But hark what follows:
Oth.: O heavy hour!
Methinks it shoud be now a huge Eclipse
Of Sun and Moon, and that the arighted globe
Shoud yawn at Alteration.
Tis is wonderful. Here is Poetry to elevate and amuse. Here is sound All-
sucient. It woud be uncivil to ask Flamstead, if the Sun and Moon can both
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 73
together be so hugely eclipsed, in any heavy hour whatsoever. Nor must the
Spectators consult Gresham Colledge, whether a body is naturally frighted till he
Yawn agen. Te Fortune of Greece is not concernd with these Matters. Tese
are Physical circumstances a Poet may be ignorant in, with out any harm to the
publick. Tese slips have no inuence on our Manners and good Life; which are
the Poets Province.
Rather may we ask here what unnatural crime Desdemona, or her Parents had
committed, to bring this Judgment down upon her; to Wed a Black-amoor, and
innocent to be thus cruelly murderd by him. What instruction can we make out of
this Catastrophe? Or whither must our reection lead us? Is not this to envenome
and sour our spirits, to make us repine and grumble at Providence; and the
government of the World? If this be our end, what boots it to be Vertuous?
Desdemona dropt the Handkerchief, and missed it that very day after her
Marriage; it might have been rumpld up with her Wedding sheets: And this
Night that she lay in her wedding sheets, the Fairey Napkin (whilst Othello was
stiing her) might have started up to disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious
mouth. Ten might she (in a Traunce for fear) have lain as dead. Ten might he,
believing her dead, touchd with remorse, have honestly cut his own Troat, by the
good leave, and with the applause of all the Spectators. Who might thereupon
have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of Providence; fairly and
truly represented on the Teatre.
Oth.: Why, how shoud she be murdered?
Em.: Alas, who knows?
Oth.: You heard her say her self it was not I.
Em.. She did so, I must needs report a truth.
Oth.: Shes like a liar gone to burn in Hell.
Twas I that did it.
Em.: O, the more Angel she!
And you the blacker Devil.
Oth.: She turnd to folly, and she was an Whore.
Em.: Tou dost belye her, and thou art a Devil.
Oth.: She was false as Water.
Em.: Tou art rash as Fire,
To say that she was false: O she was heavenly true.
In this kind of Dialogue they continue for forty lines farther, before she
bethinks her self, to cry Murder.
Em.: Help, help, O help,
Te Moor has killd my Mistress, murder, Murder.
Othello 74
But from this Scene to the end of the Play we meet with nothing but blood
and butchery, described much-what to the style of the last Speeches and Confessions
of the persons executed at Tyburn: with this dierence, that there we have the fact,
and the due course of Justice, whereas our Poet against all Justice and Reason,
against all Law, Humanity and Nature, in a barbarous arbitrary way, executes and
makes havock of his subjects, Hab-nab, as they come to hand. Desdemona dropt
her Handkerchief; therefore she must be stid. Othello, by law to be broken on
the Wheel, by the Poets cunning escapes with cutting his own Troat. Cassio,
for I know not what, comes o with a broken shin. ]ago murders his Benefactor
Roderigo, as this were poetical gratitude. Jago is not yet killd, because there never
yet was such a villain alive. Te Devil, if once he brings a man to be dipt in a
deadly sin, lets him alone, to take his course: and now when the Foul Fiend has
done with him, our wise Authors take the sinner into their poetical service; there
to accomplish him, and do the Devils drudgery.
Philosophy tells us it is a principle in the Nature of Man to be grateful.
History may tell us that John an Oaks, John a Stiles, or Jago were ungrateful;
Poetry is to follow Nature; Philosophy must be his guide: history and fact in
particular cases of John an Oaks, or John of Styles, are no warrant or direction
for a Poet. Terefore Aristotle is always telling us Poetry is spoudaioteron kai
philosophoteron, is more general and abstracted, is led more by the Philosophy,
the reason and nature of things, than History: which only records things higlety,
piglety, right or wrong as they happen. History might without any preamble or
diculty, say that Jago was ungrateful. Philosophy then calls him unnatural; But
the Poet is not, without huge labour and preparation to expose the Monster;
and after shew the Divine Vengeance executed upon him. Te Poet is not to add
willful Murder to his ingratitude: he has not antidote enough for the Poison: his
Hell and Furies are not punishment sucient for one single crime, of that bulk
and aggravation.
Em.: O thou dull Moor, that Handkerchief thou speakest on,
I found by Fortune, and did give my Husband:
For often with a solemn earnestness,
(More than indeed belongd to such a trie)
He begd of me to steal it.
Here we see the meanest woman in the Play takes this Handkerchief for a
trie below her Husband to trouble his head about it. Yet we nd, it entered into
our Poets head, to make a Tragedy of this Trie.
Ten for the unraveling of the Plot, as they call it, never was old deputy
Recorder in a Country Town, with his spectacles in summoning up the evidence,
at such a puzzle: so blunderd, and bedoulteed: as is our Poet, to have a good
riddance: And get the Catastrophe o his hands.
Othello in the Seventeenth Century 75
What can remain with the Audience to carry home with them from this sort
of Poetry, for their use and edication? how can it work, unless (instead of settling
the mind, and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts,
addle our brain, pervert our aections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our
appetite, and ll our head with vanity, confusion, Tintamarre, and Jingle-jangle,
beyond what all the Parish Clarks of London, with their old Testament farces, and
interludes, in Richard the seconds time coud ever pretend to? Our only hopes,
for the good of their Souls, can be, that these people go to the Playhouse, as they
do to Church, to sit still, look on one another, make no reection, nor mind the
Play, more than they would a Sermon.
Tere is in this Play, some burlesk, some humour, and ramble of Comical Wit,
some shew, and some Mimickry to divert the spectators: but the tragical part is,
plainly none other, than a Bloody Farce, without salt or savour.
NOTES
1. Sueton. in Tib.
2. Rehearsal..
83
OTHELLO
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Othello 86
1713John Hughes.
On the Tragedy of Othello, from The Guardian
}oln Hugles (1677-1720) vus u poet, trunslutor, euitor, pluyvriglt,
unu essuyist. ln lis L|.es cj the lcets, Suruel }olnson (quoting
}onutlun Svift) uescriEes lir us 'urong tle reuiocrists, in prose
us vell us verse.
Me duce damnosas, homines, conpescite curas. (Ovid, Rem. Amor. v. 69.)
Learn, mortals, from my precepts to control
Te furious passions that disturb the soul.
It is natural for an old man to be fond of such entertainments as revive in his
imagination the agreeable impressions made upon it in his youth: the set of wits
and beauties he was rst acquainted with, the balls and drawing-rooms in which
he made an agreeable gure, the music and actors he heard and saw, when his
life was fresh, and his spirits vigorous and quick, have usually the preference in
his esteem to any succeeding pleasures that present themselves when his taste is
grown more languid. It is for this reason I never see a picture of Sir Peter Lelys,
who drew so many of my rst friends and acquaintance, without a sensible
delight; and I am in raptures when I reect on the compositions of the famous
Mr. Henry Lawes, long before Italian music was introduced into our nation.
Above all, I am pleased in observing that the tragedies of Shakspeare, which in
my youthful days have so frequently lled my eyes with tears, hold their rank still,
and are the great support of our theatre.
It was with this agreeable prepossession of mind, I went, some time ago,
to see the old tragedy of Othello, and took my female wards with me, having
promised them a little before to carry them to the rst play of Shakspeares
which should be acted. Mrs. Cornelia, who is a great reader, and never fails to
peruse the play-bills, which are brought to her every day, gave me notice of it
early in the morning. When I came to my Lady Lizards at dinner, I found the
young folks all dressed, and expecting the performance of my promise. I went
with them at the proper time, placed them together in the boxes, and myself by
them in a corner seat. As I have the chief scenes of the play by heart, I did not
look much on the stage, but formed to myself a new satisfaction in keeping an
eye on the faces of my little audience, and observing, as it were by reection,
the dierent passions of the play represented in their countenances. Mrs. Betty
told us the names of several persons of distinction, as they took their places
in their boxes, and entertained us with the history of a new marriage or two,
till the curtain drew up. I soon perceived that Mrs. Jane was touched with the
love of Desdemona, and in a concern to see how she would come o with her
parents. Annabella had a rambling eye, and for some time was more taken up
Othello in the Eighteenth Century 87
with observing what gentlemen looked at her, and with criticising the dress
of the ladies, than with any thing that passed on the stage. Mrs. Cornelia,
who I have often said is addicted to the study of romances, commended
that speech in the play in which Othello mentions his hair-breadth scapes
in th imminent deadly breach, and recites his travels and adventures with
which he had captivated the heart of Desdemona. Te Sparkler looked several
times frighted: and as the distress of the play was heightened, their dierent
attention was collected, and xed wholly on the stage, till I saw them all, with
a secret satisfaction, betrayed into tears.
I have often considered this play as a noble, but irregular, production of a
genius, who had the power of animating the theatre beyond any writer we have
ever known. Te touches of nature in it are strong and masterly; but the economy
of the fable, and in some particulars the probability, are too much neglected. If
I would speak of it in the most severe terms, I should say as Waller does of the
Maids Tragedy,
Great are its faults, but glorious is its ame.
But it would be poor employment in a critic to observe upon the faults, and
shew no taste for the beauties, in a work that has always struck the most sensible
part of our audiences in a very forcible manner.
Te chief subject of this piece is the passion of jealousy, which the poet hath
represented at large, in its birth, its various workings and agonies, and its horrid
consequences. From this passion, and the innocence and simplicity of the person
suspected, arises a very moving distress.
It is a remark, as I remember, of a modern writer, who is thought to have
penetrated deeply into the nature of the passions, that the most extravagant love
is nearest to the strongest hatred. Te Moor is furious in both these extremes.
His love is tempestuous, and mingled with a wildness peculiar to his character,
which seems very artfully to prepare for the change which is to follow.
How savage, yet how ardent, is that expression of the raptures of his heart,
when, looking after Desdemona as she withdraws, he breaks out,
Excellent wench! Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee; and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
Te deep and subtle villany of Iago, in working this change from love
to jealousy, in so tumultuous a mind as that of Othello, prepossessed with a
condence in the disinterested aection of the man who is leading him on
insensibly to his ruin, is likewise drawn with a masterly hand. Iagos broken hints,
questions, and seeming care to hide the reason of them; his obscure suggestions
Othello 88
to raise the curiosity of the Moor: his personated confusion, and refusing to
explain himself while Othello is drawn on, and held in suspense till he grows
impatient and angry; then his throwing in the poison, and naming to him in a
caution, the passion he would raise,
O beware of jealousy!
are inimitable strokes of art, in that scene which has always been justly esteemed
one of the best which was ever represented on the theatre.
To return to the character of Othello; his strife of passions, his starts, his
returns of love, and threatenings to Iago, who had put his mind on the rack, his
relapses afterward to jealousy, his rage against his wife, and his asking pardon of
Iago, whom he thinks he had abused for his delity to him, are touches which
no one can overlook that has the sentiments of human nature, or has considered
the heart of man in its frailties, its penances, and all the variety of its agitations.
Te torments which the Moor suers are so exquisitely drawn, as to render him
as much an object of compassion, even in the barbarous action of murdering
Desdemona, as the innocent person herself who falls under his hand.
But there is nothing in which the poet has more shewn his judgment in
this play, than in the circumstance of the handkerchief, which is employed as
a conrmation to the jealousy of Othello already raised. What I would here
observe is, that the very slightness of this circumstance is the beauty of it. How
nely has Shakspeare expressed the nature of jealousy in those lines, which, on
this occasion, he puts into the mouth of Iago,
Tries light as air
Are to the jealous, conrmation strong
As proofs of holy writ.
It would be easy for a tasteless critic to turn any of the beauties I have
here mentioned into ridicule; but such a one would only betray a mechanical
judgment, formed out of borrowed rules and common-place reading, and not
arising from any true discernment in human nature, and its passions.
As the moral of this tragedy is an admirable caution against hasty suspicions,
and the giving way to the rst transports of rage and jealousy, which may
plunge a man in a few minutes into all the horrors of guilt, distraction, and
ruin, I shall farther enforce it, by relating a scene of misfortunes of the like kind,
which really happened some years ago in Spain; and is an instance of the most
tragical hurricane of passion I have ever met with in history. It may be easily
conceived, that a heart ever big with resentments of its own dignity, and never
allayed by reections which make us honour ourselves for acting with reason
and equality, will take re precipitantly. It will, on a sudden, ame too high to be
Othello in the Eighteenth Century 89
extinguished. Te short story I am going to tell is a lively instance of the truth
of this observation, and a just warning to those of jealous honour, to look about
them, and begin to possess their souls as they ought, for no man of spirit knows
how terrible a creature he is, till he comes to be provoked.
Don Alonzo, a Spanish nobleman, had a beautiful and virtuous wife, with
whom he had lived for some years in great tranquillity. Te gentleman, however,
was not free from the faults usually imputed to his nation; he was proud,
suspicious, and impetuous. He kept a Moor in his house, whom, on a complaint
from his lady, he had punished for a small oence with the utmost severity. Te
slave vowed revenge, and communicated his resolution to one of the ladys women
with whom he lived in a criminal way. Tis creature also hated her mistress, for
she feared she was observed by her; she therefore undertook to make Don
Alonzo jealous, by insinuating that the gardener was often admitted to his lady in
private, and promising to make him an eye-witness of it. At a proper time agreed
on between her and the Morisco, she sent a message to the gardener, that his
lady, having some hasty orders to give him, would have him come that moment
to her in her chamber. In the mean time she had placed Alonzo privately in an
outer room, that he might observe who passed that way. It was not long before
he saw the gardener appear. Alonzo had not patience, but, following him into the
apartment, struck him at one blow with a dagger to the heart; then dragging his
lady by the hair, without inquiring farther, he instantly killed her.
Here he paused, looked on the dead bodies with all the agitations of a demon
of revenge; when the wench who had occasioned these terrors, distracted with
remorse, threw herself at his feet, and in a voice of lamentation, without sense
of the consequence, repeated all her guilt. Alonzo was overwhelmed with all the
violent passions at one instant, and uttered the broken voices and emotions of
each of them for a moment, till at last he recollected himself enough to end his
agony of love, anger, disdain, revenge, and remorse, by murdering the maid, the
Moor, and himself.
1775Elizabeth Griffith.
From The Morality of Shakespeares Drama Illustrated
ElizuEetl Criffitl vus un uctress, ururutist, fiction vriter, essuyist,
unu trunslutor. Sle is Eest knovn for A Ser|es cj Genu|ne Letters betueen
Henr, and lrances, u collection of letters puElisleu vitl ler lusEunu.
Sle ulso vrote u criticul stuuy of tle rorulity of Slukespeure`s pluys.
. . . Shakespeare has written three pieces on the subject of jealousy; the Winters
Tale, Cymbeline, and this one, besides the character of Ford, in the Merry Wives.
But such was the richness of his genius that he has not borrowed a single thought,
image, or expression, from any one of them to assist him in any of the others. Te
subject seems rather to have grown progressively out of itself, to have inspired its
own sentiments and have dictated its own language. Tis Play, in my opinion, is
very justly considered as the last and greatest eort of our Authors genius, and
may therefore be looked upon as the chef duvre of dramatic composition.
Othello in the Eighteenth Century 95
. . . It has often surprized me to nd the character of Desdemona so much
mistaken and slighted as it too generally is. It is simple, indeed, but that is one of
its merits: for the simplicity of it is that of innocence not of folly. In my opinion,
she seems to be as perfect a model of a wife as either this author, or any other
writer, could possibly have framed. She speaks little; but whatever she says is
sensible, pure, and chaste . . . .
97
OTHELLO
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
In 1826, in London, Ira Aldridge became the first black man to play the role
of Othello. Until then, Othello had been performed by white actors, usually in
blackface. In 1814, Edmund Kean established the tradition of playing Othello
as olive-skinned. So firmly was this a precedent for white actors playing the
Moor that Laurence Oliviers Othello at the National Theater in London in
the late 1960s was noted for Oliviers full-body black makeup as well as for the
intensity of his acting.
For nineteenth-century critics, Othellos skin color continued to be an issue
of aesthetic and dramatic signicance. Te German critic August Wilhelm
Schlegel insisted that Othello was a negro, with a wild nature, moved
by a poison in his blood rather than by a passion of his heart. He described
Othellos blackness as a surface characteristic, in contrast to Iago, who was
black, meaning evil, to his depth. Other critics also employed a type of racial
analysis that we might nd disturbing today. Samuel Taylor Coleridge stated
that Shakespeare could not have drawn Othello as a negro, or sub-Saharan
African, as opposed to a lighter-skinned North African. Can we imagine him
[Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal
birthat a time, too, when negros were not known except as slaves?
To his credit, Coleridge, whose mind usually showed a greater generosity of
thought than his racial observations suggest, also provided a number of striking
insights regarding the play. For example, he challenged Samuel Johnsons
assertion that if the rst act of Othello were cut, the play would be a regular
tragedy, following the traditional unities, and therefore superior. In all acts of
judgment, Coleridge wrote, it can never be too often recollected, and scarcely
too often repeated, that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end
must be determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are
or ought to be. Troughout his lecture on Othello, Coleridge explores the
text as a moral psychologist, with such lucid comments as this, derived from his
observation of Iago: a wicked man will employ real feelings, as well as assume
those most alien from his own, as instruments of his purposes. Regarding Iagos
statement, Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus, Coleridge observes that
Othello 98
such speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will in intellect;
and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but yet of a truth converted
into a falsehood by the absence of all the necessary modications caused by the
frail nature of man.
Charles Lamb, also entangled in the prejudice of his age, argued that the
oensiveness of seeing a black man as the object of a white womans love made
Othello more suitable for reading than for viewing.
Nothing can be more soothing, more attering to the nobler parts
of our natures, than to read of a young Venetian lady of highest
extraction, through the force of love and from a sense of merit in
him whom she loved, laying aside every consideration of kindred, and
country, and colour, and wedding with a coal-black Moor . . . it is the
perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, of the imagination over the
senses . . . But upon the stage, when the imagination is no longer the
ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor unassisted senses, I appeal
to every one that has seen Othello played, whether he did not . . . nd
something extremely revolting in the courtship and wedded caresses of
Othello and Desdemona.
Few today would admit to sharing Lambs reaction to the union of Othello
and Desdemona. His response, nevertheless, can remind readers of the powerful
psychic tensions Shakespeare confronted in Othello.
Te perceptive essayist William Hazlitt was less concerned with color than
with the plays brilliant depiction of contrasting characters. He also saw the
play as closer to the concerns of everyday life than any of Shakespeares other
tragedies.
Other critics were similarly admiring. Toward the centurys end, Algernon
Charles Swinburne wrote that in Othello we get the pure poetry of natural and
personal emotion . . . . [A]s a creator, a revealer, and an interpreter, innite in his
insight and his truthfulness, his tenderness and his wisdom, his justice and his
mercy, no man who ever lived can stand beside the author of Othello.
As is often the case regarding Shakespeare, the famous playwright George
Bernard Shaw provided a dissenting view. He called the play pure melodrama,
adding, there is not a touch of character in it that goes below the skin. However,
he also wrote: But when the worst has been said of Othello that can be provoked
by its superciality and staginess, it remains magnicent by the volume of its
passion and the splendor of its word-music.
Othello was also popular outside of Britain. In France, Alfred de Vigny made
a French translation of Othello in 1829. Later, Victor Hugo famously compared
Othello to night and Iago to evil, the other form of darkness. In fact, the
play had permeated French cultural imagination so eectively that it also
became subject matter for other types of artists, who in eect provided their
Othello in the Nineteenth Century 99
commentary via a dierent medium. In 1825, the great French painter Delacroix
saw Edmund Kean perform Othello in London. No words are strong enough
to express ones admiration for the genius of Shakespeare, who created Othello
and Iago, he wrote. In 1827, an English acting company headed by Charles
Kimble performed Othello at the Odon in Paris. Delacroix was among those
in the audience, and he later wrote: Te English have opened their theatre.
Tey have worked miracles, for they draw such crowds to the Odon that all the
paving-stones in the neighborhood rattle under the carriage wheels. In a word,
they are all the rage. Te most stubborn classicists have had to strike their ag.
Our actors go to school to the English, and stare in astonishment. Delacroix
painted Othello and Desdemona in 1849 and Te Death of Desdemona in 1858. An
equally sumptuous painting showing the death of Desdemona was painted by
Alexandre-Marie Colin in 1829. All three are canvases swollen with texture,
rich in claret, turquoise, and sky-blue tints, the paint vaporously and moodily
applied. Te drama of the pictures relies on the familiarity of the spectators with
the story the scene depicts. Te paintings not only present but also dramatize the
play, oering, in romantic fashion, a voluptuousness of pain.
Te greatest translation of Othello from one medium to another, however,
was not in painting but in music. In February 1887, Giuseppe Verdis opera
Otello, using an Italian-language adaptation of Othello by Arrigo Boito, was rst
produced at La Scala in Milan.
In the United States, Othello drew the attention of former president John
Quincy Adams. Even this consistently anti-slavery politician couldnt help
but express his revulsion at the idea of Desdemonas attraction to Othello. He
declared that Desdemona was actually an unsympathetic character because of
it: I must believe that, in exhibiting a daughter of a Venitian nobleman of the
highest rank eloping in the dead of the night to marry a thick-lipped wool-headed
Moor, opening a train of consequences which lead to her own destruction by her
husbands hands, and to that of her father by a broken heart, he did not intend
to present her as an example of the perfection of female virtue. Such attitudes
were sadly persistent at the time.
1809August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Criticisms on Shakspeares Tragedies, from
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
August Willelr Scllegel (1767-1845) vus u sclolur, critic, poet, unu
professor. He trunsluteu u nurEer of Slukespeure`s pluys into tle
Cerrun lunguuge unu vus one of tle rost influentiul uisserinutors of
tle iueus of tle Cerrun Roruntic roverent.
Othello 100
If Romeo and Juliet shines with the colours of the dawn of morning, but a
dawn whose purple clouds already announce the thunder of a sultry day,
Othello is, on the other hand, a strongly shaded picture: we might call it a
tragical Rembrandt. What a fortunate mistake that the Moor (under which
name in the original novel, a baptized Saracen of the Northern coast of
Africa was unquestionably meant), has been made by Shakespeare in every
respect a negro! We recognize in Othello the wild nature of that glowing
zone which generates the most ravenous beasts of prey and the most deadly
poisons, tamed only in appearance by the desire of fame, by foreign laws of
honour, and by nobler and milder manners. His jealousy is not the jealousy
of the heart, which is compatible with the tenderest feeling and adoration
of the beloved object; it is of that sensual kind which, in burning climes,
has given birth to the disgraceful connement of women and many other
unnatural usages. A drop of this poison ows in his veins, and sets his whole
blood in the wildest ferment. Te Moor seems noble, frank, conding,
grateful for the love shown him; and he is all this, and, moreover, a hero who
spurns at danger, a worthy leader of an army, a faithful servant of the state;
but the mere physical force of passion puts to ight in one moment all his
acquired and mere habitual virtues, and gives the upper hand to the savage
over the moral man. Tis tyranny of the blood over the will betrays itself even
in the expression of his desire of revenge upon Cassio. In his repentance, a
genuine tenderness for his murdered wife, and in the presence of the damning
evidence of his deed, the painful feeling of annihilated honour at last bursts
forth; and in the midst of these painful emotions he assails himself with the
rage wherewith a despot punishes a runaway slave. He suers as a double
man; at once in the higher and the lower sphere into which his being was
divided.While the Moor bears the nightly colour of suspicion and deceit
only on his visage, Iago is black within. He haunts Othello like his evil genius,
and with his light (and therefore the more dangerous,) insinuations, he leaves
him no rest; it is as if by means of an unfortunate anity, founded however
in nature, this inuence was by necessity more powerful over him than the
voice of his good angel Desdemona. A more artful villain than this Iago was
never portrayed; he spreads his nets with a skill which nothing can escape.
Te repugnance inspired by his aims becomes tolerable from the attention of
the spectators being directed to his means: these furnish endless employment
to the understanding. Cool, discontented, and morose, arrogant where he
dare be so, but humble and insinuating when it suits his purposes, he is a
complete master in the art of dissimulation; accessible only to selsh
emotions, he is thoroughly skilled in rousing the passions of others, and of
availing himself of every opening which they give him: he is as excellent an
observer of men as any one can be who is unacquainted with higher motives
Othello in the Nineteenth Century 101
of action from his own experience; there is always some truth in his malicious
observations on them. He does not merely pretend an obdurate incredulity as
to the virtue of women, he actually entertains it; and this, too, falls in with
his whole way of thinking, and makes him the more t for the execution of
his purpose.
As in every thing he sees merely the hateful side, he dissolves in the rudest
manner the charm which the imagination casts over the relation between the
two sexes: he does so for the purpose of revolting Othellos senses, whose
heart otherwise might easily have convinced him of Desdemonas innocence.
Tis must serve as an excuse for the numerous expressions in the speeches of
Iago from which modesty shrinks. If Shakespeare had written in our days he
would not perhaps have dared to hazard them; and yet this must certainly
have greatly injured the truth of his picture. Desdemona is a sacrice without
blemish. She is not, it is true, a high ideal representation of sweetness and
enthusiastic passion like Juliet; full of simplicity, softness, and humility, and
so innocent, that she can hardly form to herself an idea of the possibility of
indelity, she seems calculated to make the most yielding and tenderest of
wives. Te female propensity wholly to resign itself to a foreign destiny has
led her into the only fault of her life, that of marrying without her fathers
consent. Her choice seems wrong; and yet she has been gained over to Othello
by that which induces the female to honour in man her protector and guide,
admiration of his determined heroism, and compassion for the suerings
which he had undergone. With great art it is so contrived, that from the very
circumstance that the possibility of a suspicion of her own purity of motive
never once enters her mind, she is the less reserved in her solicitations for
Cassio, and thereby does but heighten more and more the jealousy of Othello.
To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of Desdemona, Shakspeare
has in Emilia associated with her a companion of doubtful virtue. From the
sinful levity of this woman it is also conceivable that she should not confess
the abstraction of the handkerchief when Othello violently demands it back:
this would otherwise be the circumstance in the whole piece the most dicult
to justify.
Cassio is portrayed exactly as he ought to be to excite suspicion without
actual guiltamiable and nobly disposed, but easily seduced. Te public events
of the rst two acts show us Othello in his most glorious aspect, as the support
of Venice and the terror of the Turks: they serve to withdraw the story from the
mere domestic circle, just as this is done in Romeo and Juliet by the dissensions
between the Montagues and the Capulets. No eloquence is capable of painting
the overwhelming force of the catastrophe in Othello,the pressure of feelings
which measure out in a moment the abysses of eternity.
Othello 102
1811Charles Lamb.
On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, from The Ref lector
Clurles LurE (1775-1834), poet unu essuyist, is rost furous for lis
'Eliu essuys unu lis cliluren`s Eook 7ales jrcm Shakesear, vlicl le
vrote vitl lis sister, Mury LurE.
. . . Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. But how many
dramatic personages are there in Shakspeare, which though more tractable
and feasible (if I may so speak) than Lear, yet from some circumstance, some
adjunct to their character, are improper to be shewn to our bodily eye. Othello
for instance. Nothing can be more soothing, more attering to the nobler parts
of our natures, than to read of a young Venetian lady of highest extraction,
through the force of love and from a sense of merit in him whom she loved,
laying aside every consideration of kindred, and country, and colour, and wedding
with a coal-black Moor(for such he is represented, in the imperfect state of
knowledge respecting foreign countries in those days, compared with our own,
or in compliance with popular notions, though the Moors are now well enough
known to be by many shades less unworthy of a white womans fancy)it is the
perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, of the imagination over the senses. She
sees Othellos colour in his mind. But upon the stage, when the imagination is
no longer the ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor unassisted senses, I appeal
to every one that has seen Othello played, whether he did not, on the contrary,
sink Othellos mind in his colour; whether he did not nd something extremely
revolting in the courtship and wedded caresses of Othello and Desdemona;
and whether the actual sight of the thing did not over-weigh all that beautiful
compromise which we make in reading;and the reason it should do so is
obvious, because there is just so much reality presented to our senses as to give a
perception of disagreement, with not enough of belief in the internal motives,
all that which is unseen,to overpower and reconcile the rst and obvious
prejudices. What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action; what we are
conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind, and its movements . . . .
137
OTHELLO
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
1951Harold C. Goddard.
Othello, from The Meaning of Shakespeare
Hurolu C. Couuuru (1878-1950) vus leuu of tle Englisl Depurtrent
ut Svurtlrore College. One of tle rost irportunt tventietl-century
Eooks on Slukespeure is lis 7he Mean|ng cj Shakeseare, puElisleu ufter
lis ueutl.
I
Hamlet is Shakespeares supreme interrogation, the culmination of his capacity
to ask questions of life. In Othello life begins to answer. Not that Hamlet contains
no answers, but they are not so much expressed as to be inferred. Othello speaks
more directly. In it the poets tragic genius moves from its negative to its positive
phase and tragedy recovers something of that pre-Euripidean state so eloquently
characterized by Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, it is true, is
always the exception. It is like an overture to the later Tragedies and contains
hints and glimpses of what was to come in practically every one of them. But
if Juliet is the morning star, Desdemona is the dawnanother morn risen on
the mid-noon of Hamlet. With her, an almost unbroken line of beings begins to
enter the Shakespearean world, with power not so much to solve as to put out of
existence the problems which Hamlet propounded but to which Hamlet himself
had no answer but silence.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 187
Te psychological link between Hamlet and Othello is close. Te one grows out
of the other as naturally as the blossom from the bud. Te obvious tie between the
two is that both are plays of revenge. A far subtler and more intimate one is the
fact that the motifs of eavesdropping, of pouring poison in the ear (Ill pour this
pestilence into his ear), and of the mousetrapthe sublimation of which from
the literal to the gurative had already gone far in the earlier playare in the
later one carried to the psychological limit. Iago is a sort of super-eavesdropper.
His plot is the last word in traps. And the scene in the third act, where he pours
his vile story in the waking Othellos earaccounted by many the most dramatic
one in Shakespearemakes the corresponding scene where Claudius murders
the sleeping King Hamlet, whether as narrated by the Ghost or re-enacted in the
dumb show, primitive in comparison. However, these metaphorical similarities
and echoes are merely the signs of a more deep-lying organic connection. And
here, again, dreams illuminate the poetic mind.
Te analogy has already been noted between the successive works of a poet
and the successive dreams of a dreamer. On this principle a character with a
double personality in an earlier work may appear as two characters in a later
one, as the promise of both Julius Caesar and Brutus, for example, may be
traced in the man who was, variously, Hal, Prince Henry, and King Henry V.
Te imaginative energy that created Hamlet did not cease functioning when
Hamlet himself expired. Tere could scarcely be a better example than the Prince
of Denmark of the divided, or, we might better say, the dividing man. With the
deep conict within him of masculine and feminine traits, he is, as we noted, a
sort of unfullled promise of the Platonic man-woman. It is as if the tension
between these poles of his nature sought an equilibrium too unstable to be
maintained, so that, like a cell that bifurcates, Hamlet in the next worldthat is,
in Othellodivides into Desdemona and Iago.
Te idea must of course not he taken too literally nor pressed too far,
but, within limits, it can be highly suggestive to those interested in psychic
relationships of this sort. (Tose who are not, or who consider them fanciful or
far-fetched, may ignore this onethe rest of the argument does not depend on
it.) Hamlet, it is generally admitted, is the most paradoxical mixture of good and
evil. Iago is close to pure evil; Desdemona close to pure good. Hamlets most
endearing traitshis ingenuousness, his modesty, his truthfulness, his freedom,
his courage, his love, his sympathetic imaginationare all Desdemonas. His
darker and more detestable oneshis suspicion, his coarseness, his sarcastic wit,
his critical intellect, his callousness, his cruelty, his sensuality, his savage hatred,
his bloodiness, his revengeare all Iagos. Only in dramatic imagination is the
nobler Hamlet akin to Iago. But even there his nal prostitution of that gift to
evil
1
ties him exactly to his counterpart who notoriously did the same. What
looked like an exception clinches the analogy. And the qualities of Hamlet
that neither Desdemona nor Iago inheritshis melancholy, his brooding, his
Othello 188
hesitancy, his hysteriainstead of confuting, conrm the contention: for these
are the result of the strife between his two selves, and when the two have been
split apart the strife naturally ceases. Te strife within Hamlet is replaced by the
strife between Iago and Desdemona (for the possession of Othello), or, if one
prefers, is replaced by the contrast between them, the strife in that case being
between Iago and that part of Othello that loves Desdemona and has faith
in her. Hamletnot quite able to slough o his atavistic traits and step into
the futuredivides into his components, one part going up with Desdemona,
another down with Iago. (Where still other parts go will be seen later.)
It is Othello and Cassio, standing between the extremes, who in a way
inherit and continue the divided nature of Hamlet. In neness of impulse, in
tenderness, in trustfulness, in openness and freedom, both of them are much
like Desdemona. Shakespeare had to endow all three with these qualities to
make the machinations of Iago credible. If any one of them had been lacking in
faith, his plot would have been frustrated. So, in a sense, it is the triad, Othello-
Cassio-Desdemona, rather than just Desdemona, with whom Iago is thrown
into contrast. But Othello compared with Desdemona is vulnerable, and Cassio
compared with her is common clay. Teir weaknesses are Iagos opportunity and
the source of the dramatic warfare.
II
And there is another bond between Hamlet and Othelloor more specically
between the Prince of Denmark and Desdemona. Both dramas emerge from
a parentchild situation. Hamlet obeys his father. Desdemona disobeys hers.
And the more we gure the Father to ourselves as the symbol of Authority
and Force, the deeper the signicance of the contrast becomes. Romeo, Hal,
Brutus, and Hamlet opposed to the Fathers will an energy that, viewing them
as a group, steadily mounted until in Hamlet a stage of near-equilibrium was
reached. Desdemona is the next term of the progression. She successfully dees
the Father. It is this seemingly triing fact that makes Othello the turning point
of Shakespeare.
Brabantio may seem like a very diluted counterpart of the Ghost, and he
is as an emissary of revenge. But his function in the play is in a negative sense
the same. Like Capulet or like Portias father, he would impose his will on the
next generation. But Desdemona, unlike Hamlet, will not sacrice her life or
happiness on the altar of Authority, however willing she is to sacrice both on
the altar of Love. She stands for freedom, and her audacity in doing what she
thinks right in the face of her fathers opposition is sucient answer to those
incredible readers who persist in thinking her weak. We are reminded by contrast
of Ophelia, in which case Brabantio falls into Polonius place, however unfair in
other respects the comparison may be. Desdemona is Ophelia choosing the other
fork of the road. She is an anti-Ophelia. All we have to ask is what would have
Othello in the Twentieth Century 189
happened in Hamlet if Hamlet had had her love. She never would have deserted
him in his critical hour. Frailty, thy name is woman. Desdemona is a living
contradiction of that indispensable premise of Hamlets philosophy and action.
In her presence his tragedy would have melted into thin air.
Te signicance in the fact that it is a woman who thus refuses to ruin
her life by surrender to the Force of the Pastthe tyrant custom, as Othello
calls itcannot be exaggerated, for Desdemona, heralded indeed by Juliet,
is the rst of a series of Shakespearean women, in tragedy at least, who defy
authority in this sense. Man after man has wrestled with this problem of force
in vain, for force is traditionally mans method. Now, women begin to attack
it not in vainnot in vain, that is, from the tragic viewpoint. Te feminine
pole of Shakespeares genius is gaining ascendancy. Shakespeare led a life of
allegory: his works are the comments on it. Desdemona helps us understand
that alluring sentence.
III
Te audacity of Desdemonas act is at least quadrupled by the fact that the man
she marries is a Moor. Which raises the old question:
Is Othello brown or black?
Te controversy over this problem has been a long and heated one. Its main
result has been to prove once more that learning is the least imaginative thing in
the world. Te argument has been in part textual: the marshaling on both sides
of every passage in the play that seems in any way pertinent to the question
of Othellos color; in part historical and ethnological: an attempt to determine
whether Shakespeare could himself have been aware of the distinction between
Moor and Ethiopian. Two things at any rate are clear: (1) Iagos statements
about Othellos appearance cannot be taken at face value; (2) the word black is
used more than once in the playeven by Desdemona herselfas a synonym
for brunette in contrast with fair which, when put over against it, stands for
blonde. Tese considerations may or may not be deemed decisive. Te scholar
who is not convinced one way or the other can still keep his mind open. But the
actor and director in the case of a particular production must decide the question
once for all. On the stage Othello cannot be both brown and black at the same
time, and the decision, in certain places and circumstances, may be a critical one.
Te reader on the other hand is relatively free. He may visualize Othello more
or less to suit himself.
But turn from the world of drama to the world of poetry and we perceive that
all this misses the point and begs the question.
What attracted Shakespeare in the rst place to this exotic story of a Moor,
this blood-and-thunder novella of Cinthios, so inferior in many ways to anything
else he ever used for tragedy? A futile question, it would seem, beyond the fact
that the tale had obvious theatrical qualities. Yet perhaps not so futile after all, for
Othello 190
in one respect we can answer it with almost as much assurance as if we actually
had access to Shakespeares mind.
Te moment he saw that rst line, Tere was once a Moor in Venice . . . , how
could he have failed to recall Te Jew of Venice, as the public had apparently insisted
on rechristening his own play laid in the same city? Te scene the same, the title
almost the same, and both stories centering around one alien in the midst of many
native Venetians! Nor did the analogy stop there. Everything in Te Merchant of
Venice turns on the contrast between inner and outer, depth and surface, on the
gilded that is mistaken for the golden, the precious that is hidden beneath the
base. But here, in Cinthios tale, is a hero with a dark skin caught in the toils of
a villain with a fair and honest exterior. Te casket theme exactly! the old story
over againwith its implicit tragedy now explicitonly with its material symbols
transmuted into the very stu of human life, not gold and lead, but good and evil,
light and shadow, black and white. Othello and Iago must have been conceived
at the moment that that analogy struck the poet, one black without and white
within, the other white without and black within. And to these two a third was
inevitably added, Desdemona, white both without and within. Tese contrasts are
obviously the substance and essence of the play, penetrating far under any merely
ethnological or theatrical considerations to the heart of the imagination itself
2
and making even the symbolism of Te Merchant of Venice crude in comparison.
To the imagination, black, not brown, represents the shadow, evil, death. On the
level of poetry that settles it beyond appeal. Othello is black.
Tis contrast scheme of light and dark sets everything in perspective. In a
sense it predetermines the characterization.
I saw Othellos visage in his mind,
says Desdemona, and instantly we are convinced that though the two are alien
in race they are akin in spirit. Troughout, she seems unconscious of his color
and under the inuence of her love he too forgets it. Te symbolism demands
that Desdemonas own visage, both without and within, be a shining white. And,
symbolism or no symbolism, that is exactly what Shakespeare makes it. Which
is why her role is beyond the reach of any actress. Innocence cannot be imitated.
Only some Desdemona-like woman from some region uncontaminated by
anything theatrical might be Desdemona momentarily on the stage, as a child
becomes what he plays.
Just the opposite is true of Iago. Only a consummate actor can render
him. I wonder if anyone ever hasever has succeeded, I mean, in making him
convincingly honest not just to Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona, but even, in
its presence, to the audience that is in the secret. Tat would be the test. Tat
would make everything credible. Iago is a snakebut a snake under a ower.
On the surface he must not fascinate like a snake. He must charm like a ower.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 191
What wisdom he utters, and into what depravity it turns on his lips! Take his
metaphor of the garden: Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are
gardeners . . . . If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise
another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusionslike the conclusion of this play! What is
that but Hamlets speech on blood and judgment translated, signicantly, from
poetry into prose? But one was spoken to Horatio, the other to Roderigo. One
in profound aection, the other in murderous contempt. How diametrical ideas
become that are practically identical!
Iago keeps reminding us of Othellos color just as Desdemona causes us to
forget it. To him Othello is an old black ram, or worse. He loses no opportunity
to keep him conscious of his supposed inferiority and he makes the most of the
unnatural character of his union with Desdemona. Te degree to which the ocher
characters are scandalized by the marriage is a measure of their own blindness
or depravity, or both. Brabantio is scandalized by it out of family pride: he wants
to marry his daughter to one of the wealthy curled darlings of our nation.
Roderigo, one of those very darlings, is scandalized by it because of envy: he
wants Desdemona for himself, and to him Othello is a thick-lips. Emilia refers
to the marriage as Desdemonas most lthy bargain. (Te phrase reveals her
vulgar quality, but it was uttered under a tragic misunderstanding and on the
brink of incredible loyalty, so we forgive it.) Te Duke of Venice, on the other
hand, a man of character and insight, approves the match:
Noble signior,
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.
And as for Cassio, he seems scarcely more conscious of anything alien in Othello
than Desdemona herself. To the end, in spite of everything, Othello remains to
him just dear general.
Tese characters, it is interesting to note, all conform, if less extremely, to the
pattern of light and shade of the three main gures. Like those in Te Merchant
of Venice they are all one thing without, another within. Emilia: common clay
concealing a capacity for devotion almost divine. Roderigo: the ne young
gentleman rotten at the core. Bianca: the courtesan who falls in love. Brabantio:
the unrelenting father, who, nevertheless, dies of a broken heart. Cassio: the
proigate with a pure heart, the drunkard who comes through true as steel. All
this cannot be chance.
IV
Iagos jealousy of Cassio is real enough, but it is the occasion rather than the
cause of his plot against Othello; and the other reasons he assigns for his hatred
Othello 192
in the course of the play are not so much motives as symptoms of a deeply
underlying condition. Te psychology of Iago is that of the slave-with-brains
who aspires to power yet remains at heart a slave.
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followd.
Some cogging cozening slave, says Emilia, describing the as yet hypothetical
and unidentied villain who is actually her husband. O cursed, cursed slave!
cries Othello, at the end, to that part of himself that Iago had corrupted. We are
led to conjecture that some situation or event early in Iagos life that produced
a profound sense of injustice or inferiority, and instigated a revolt against it,
could alone have produced so twisted a nature, as in the case of Emily Bronts
Heathcli or Dostoevskys Smerdyakov, gures spiritually akin to Shakespeares
villain. It would be consumingly interesting to have a peep into Iagos childhood,
as we have into theirs. It must have been full of power-fantasies like those that
Dostoevsky describes in A Raw Youth. Te secret consciousness of power is
more insupportably delightful than open domination. I dont know, the Raw
Youth declares, whether the spider perhaps does not hate the y he has marked
and is snaring. Dear little y! It seems to me that the victim is loved, or at least
may be loved. Here I love my enemy; I am delighted, for instance, that she is so
beautiful. Compare this with Iagos words on Desdemona:
Now, I do love her too;
Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure
I stand accountant for as great a sin,
But partly led to diet my revenge,
or his,
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
Tat shall enmesh them all.
Iago is a spider whose web is spun out of his brain. (Tough that is by no means
all he is.) Whatever he began by being, however human the motives that at
rst led him on, he ends by being an image of Death revenging itself on Life
through destruction. Why does a small boy knock down, in pure wantonness,
the tower of blocks his younger brother has so slowly and laboriously built up?
Iago is like that:
Othello in the Twentieth Century 193
If Cassio do remain,
He hath a daily beauty in his life
Tat makes me ugly.
Tese are the most consciously self-revealing words he speaks. Ugliness cannot
tolerate beauty. Death cannot tolerate life.
Tat that likes not me
Pleases me best.
If you are defeated, change the rules of the game, call defeat success (as if to get
the fewest runs in baseball were the object), and then you win! Drag down the
goodit is so much easier than rising. Dene darkness as light.
Shakespeares archvillain had many Shakespearean forerunners: the melo-
dramatic Richard III, the casuistical Pandulph, the sly and crafty Ulysses. But
they all fade before him. He is perhaps the most terric indictment of pure
intellect in the literature of the worldpure intellect, which, as Emerson
said, is the pure devil. Tink, and die, as Enobarbus puts it, though he
may not have realized all he was packing into three words. Te intellect, as all
the prophets have divined, should be the servant of the soul. Performing that
function it is indispensable. Tere can scarcely be too much of it. Indeed, the
primacy in the world of art of men like Beethoven, Michelangelo, and Shake-
speare himself is that their imaginations are held in check by their critical
power. But the moment the intellect sets up a claim of sovereignty for itself, it
is the slave in revolt, the torchbearer turned incendiary, Lucifer fallen. Iago is
a moral pyromaniac.
I wonder, if he had been of more limited intelligence, whether he might
not have been, literally, a pyromaniac. He exhibits a dozen traits of that type of
criminal, including a secret joy in being on the scene of the conagration he has
kindled. Shakespeare himself hints as much in the speech in which, of all in the
play barring the soliloquies, Iago most fully reveals himself for what he is. It is
in the opening scene, while his plot, if conceived, is still unconscious. And he
is boasting to his dupe, Roderigo. He is o guard. But rst we must recall the
conscious revelation that leads up to the unconscious one:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
Te native act and gure of my heart
In compliment extern, tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.
Othello 194
How characteristic of Shakespeare that in his very next speech Iago should place
his heart squarely on his sleeve, and put into words, and still more into tone,
precisely what he is.
Rod.: What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe,
If he can carryt thus!
Iago: Call up her father:
Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,
And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with ies; though that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on t,
As it may lose some colour.
Rod.: Here is her fathers house; Ill call aloud.
Iago: Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell
As when, by night and negligence, the re
Is spied in populous cities.
Poison! Plague! Fire! Never again, unless to himself, do we hear Iago speak
with such gusto. Te bewildering shift in antecedents of the pronouns (Rouse
him, make after him), the rst referring to Brabantio, the second to Othello,
is intentional on Shakespeares part, revealing in a ash that Iagos hatred of
Othello is already an obsession. For these few seconds, before he puts on his
perpetual mask and cloak, Iago stands before us naked.
But if he is a moral pyromaniac, it is only morally that he is mad, and,
whatever may be said of the res he kindles in others, the re in his own veins is
an icy re. Now could I drink hot blood, cried Hamlet. Iago goes fathoms lower
than that. For I am nothing if not critical, he observes calmly, as he scrutinizes
Desdemonas beauty on the threshold of her destruction; and as he begins to
weave the web that is to enmesh her, he cries:
By the mass, tis morning;
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
Hot revenge is a fearful thing. But its devastation has bounds, because
its passion reveals its secret, makes it act prematurely, mars its aim, and soon
burns it out. Cold revenge is incredibly more awful. For it can conceal, it can
calculate, it can lie in wait; it can control itself, it can coil and strike without
warning at the crucial moment. Cold revenge is the union of intellect and
hatethe most annihilating of all alliances. Dante was right in making his
nethermost hell of ice.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 195
V
Te deliberate placing of the highest intellectual gifts and achievements at the
service of the lowest human instincts is a phenomenon with which the twentieth
century is acquainted on a scale never previously attained. And whether the
instinct be fear (the main defensive one) or revenge, greed, cruelty, thirst to possess
more power or to assert power already possessed (the main oensive ones) makes
little dierence in the end, so readily do they pass into one another.
It is no recent discovery that brain as well as brawn is essential to the
ecient ghter. Te Trojan Horse is the perennial symbol of that truth, and it
is appropriate that Shakespeare put on the lips of Ulysses an encomium on the
still and mental parts of war. But it remained for war in our time to eect the
total mobilization of those still and mental parts. Te ideological warfare that
precedes and precipitates the physical conict (cold war as it has signicantly
come to be called); the propaganda that prepares and unies public opinion;
the conscription, in a dozen spheres, of the nations brains; the organization of
what is revealingly known as the intelligence service; but most of all the practical
absorption of science into the military eort: these things, apart from the
knowledge and skill required for the actual ghting, permit us to dene modern
war, once it is begun, as an unreserved dedication of the human intellect to death
and destruction.
But that is exactly what Iago isan unreserved dedication of intellect to
death and destruction. To the extent that this is true, Iago is an incarnation of
the spirit of modern war.
Tis does not mean that those who participate in modern war are Iagos.
Te scientist calmly conducting his experiment in a clean laboratory without
an iota of hate in his heart bears no resemblance to Shakespeares Italian end.
But there may be hate, and there will almost certainly be fear, in the heart of the
man who months later and thousands of miles away utilizes the results of that
experiment on the ghting front (not to imply for a moment that there may not
be heroism in it also). Nobody wants war. No individual does, that is, or very
few. But that great Composite Personality which is the nation is driven into it
nevertheless against the wishes of the thousands of individuals who make it up.
It is within that Personality, not generally within the individual, that the union
of intellect with animal instincts takes place, the prostitution especially of mans
supreme intellectual achievement, modern science, to the most destructive of his
ancestral practices. It is something within this Composite Personality that is like
Iago, and, like him, it did not foresee when it set out to make war ecient that
it was playing with the possibility of its own extinction. Te uniqueness of Iago,
like the uniqueness of modern war, does not lie in the spirit of destruction. Tat
has always been common enough. It lies in the genius he dedicates to destructive
ends. Modern war would not recognize itself in the portraits of Shakespeares
Othello 196
classical and feudal ghters, in Hector and Hotspur, in Faulconbridge and
Coriolanus, or in Othello himself. But let it look in the glass and it will behold
Iago. In him Shakespeare reveals, with the clarity of nightmare, that unrestrained
intellect, instead of being the opposite of force, and an antidote for it, as much of
the modern world thinks, is force functioning on another plane. It is the immoral
equivalent of war, and as certain to lead to it in due season as Iagos machinations
were to lead to death. All other knowledge is hurtful, says Montaigne, to him
who has not the science of honesty and goodness.
VI
To those who forget Emersons wise observation that perpetual modernness
is the measure of merit in any work of art all this will be an unpardonable
digression from the play. To them it will be allegorizing Othello, reading into it
what could never have entered Shakespeares head. On the contrary, it is in this
case demonstrable from the text that Shakespeare denitely intended precisely
this equation between Iago and War, though, naturally, he could not have
foreseen how the changes in the conduct of war between his time and ours were
to sharpen and point the analogy. It is a perfect example of the nature of poetic
foresight as distinguished from the popular conception of prophecy.
Te opening of every one of Shakespeares greatest Tragedies, as certainly as
a Wagnerian overture, sounds the central theme or themes of the play. Othello,
taking its cue from Troilus and Cressida, begins with a contrast between the
physical and the mental parts of war. Iago, who is to prove himself such a master
of intrigue, is cursing Othello to Roderigo for preferring Cassio as his lieutenant,
with his bookish theoric, mere prattle, without practice, to himself with his
active service in the eld. However little we may suspect his sincerity at a rst
reading, the subject of his introductory speech portends a play in some sense
about war as infallibly as their respective openings indicate that Hamlet will
concern itself with ghosts, Macbeth with the nature of evil, and King Lear with
the relations of the generations.
I doubt whether many people think of Othello as a play about war. But it is,
even literally. Tree of its four main characters are warriors. And the fourth is a
warriors wife, herself referred to by her husband at the climax of his joy as my
fair warrior. Even Cassio, whom Iago so despised, was considered worthy by
the home government of taking Othellos place in Cyprus. Furthermore, the war
between the Venetians and the Turks, which is the background and occasion of
the action, is as indispensable to the plot and the moral as the feud between the
Capulets and the Montagues is to Romeo and Juliet. It is obvious in the earlier
case that if you drop out the feud the play falls to pieces. It is not so obvious, but
it is just as true, that if you drop out the war from Othello it falls to pieces. Te
more closely one examines the analogy between the two plays in this respect the
more impressive it becomes.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 197
War is the royal occupation. Othello is a follower and master of it. Yet, before
the play is over, Othellos occupations gone. Why and how it went it is vital for
us to see, for in these days war is the worlds occupation.
Te Turk in this play, until he disappears beneath the waves, is consistently
represented as the Enemy. At the beginning, his eet is reported as bearing down
on Cyprus, then on Rhodes, then again on Cyprus. Te Venetians set out to head
him oor to be on hand when he appears. A terric storm arises. Te Turks are
all drowned. Te Venetians arrive safe in Cyprus.
All this at rst sight seems of no intrinsic interest. It is mere machinery,
mere scenery against which the domestic drama is to be enacted. Unless we are
on guard, we skip it mentally in the reading. But we do so at our peril, for the
scenery in Shakespearean tragedy is part of the action, and never more so, not
even in King Lear, than here. Be what cannot be skipped. Te war in Othello
conforms to that Emersonian injunction.
Reread the play with sharp attention to the parts in which war gures,
pondering particularly every allusion to the Turksthere are many of them
and it is inescapable that what Shakespeare is bent on is an insinuation into
the underconsciousness of the reader of an analogy between Iago and the
Turk. Indeed, in one passage Iago openly makes the identication himself.
Desdemona has dubbed him slanderer for his strictures upon women. Nay,
it is true, retorts Iago, or else I am a Turk. But it is not true. And so he is
a Turk.
Te end crowns the whole, and Othello conrms the capital nature of the
analogy in those last words that set the seal on his lips and create the metaphor
he acts out in death:
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turband Turk
Beat a Venetian and traducd the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote himthus.
Whereupon he stabs himself, as if he would reach down with his dagger to that
Turk-Iago within himself that enabled the other Iago to beat and traduce him.
Te speech in which the analogy is fast set up is one of those seemingly
casual, unnecessarily digressive ones that a stage director can be counted on to
abbreviate or cut out. As we have repeatedly noticed, it is into such passages,
when attention is suspended, that Shakespeare loves to insert his most valuable
clues. So here. A sailor enters and announces that the Turkish preparation makes
for Rhodes. Incredible, says a Senator, that they should not take Cyprus rst,
which is both easier to capture and more useful to them. Te expedition to
Rhodes must be a blind.
Othello 198
First Sen.: Tis cannot be,
By no assay of reason; tis a pageant,
To keep us in false gaze. When we consider
Te importancy of Cyprus to the Turk,
And let ourselves again but understand
Tat, as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes,
So may he with more facile question bear it,
For that it stands not in such warlike brace,
But altogether lacks the abilities
Tat Rhodes is dressd in; if we make thought of this,
We must not think the Turk is so unskilful
To leave that latest which concerns him rst,
Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain
To wake and wage a danger protless.
It would be prosaic to put the analogy on all fours. But who can miss it?
Te Turk is apparently taking one course that under cover of it he may take an
entirely dierent one. Iago is about to do the same. A pageant To keep us in false
gaze. What better description could we ask of his plot? And the last four lines of
the passage quoteddo they not t Iago as well as they do the Turk? Indeed we
are almost tempted to go on and seek analogies for Cyprus and Rhodes in Iagos
story. But that would be to force what is thrown out as a suggestion rather than
intended for an exact comparison. What is beyond doubt is that the passage is
prophetic of the plot against Othello, and, in the light of the doom that overcame
the Turks, of its ultimate spiritual defeat and of Iagos submergence under the
waves of a nal silence.
With this hint, the storm scene at the beginning of Act II takes on
undreamed-of meanings.
When, following the tempest that has imperiled them all and engulfed the
Turks, Othello at last arrives in Cyprus, he is shaken to the depths of his nature
by the experience of stepping, as it were, from the embrace of death to the
embrace of Desdemona. Te piercing beauty of the words he speaks to her is
stamped with that individual quality which Shakespeare somehow imparts to the
speech of all his lovers, revealing his belief that every true love between man and
woman is unique. O my fair warrior!note the word, for it is Shakespeares as
well as Othellosthe Moor exclaims, as he catches sight of his wife. My dear
Othello! she replies. And, as he takes her in his arms, he goes on:
It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me. O my souls joy!
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have wakend death!
Othello in the Twentieth Century 199
And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus-high, and duck again as low
As hells from heaven! If it were now to die,
Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear,
My soul hath her content so absolute
Tat not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.
At a rst reading we enter into Othellos wonder and joy, a content so absolute
that we, like him, cannot imagine it augmented; and we feel that undertone of
sadness that accompanies all supreme felicity and beautyenhanced in this
instance by our knowledge of the plot against them. When, however, having
nished the play, we reread these lines, we suddenly realize that Othello has
prayed in them for exactly what the future was to bring him: a storm as much
more terric than the tumult of wind and wave through which he has just passed
as the ocean of human emotion is more treacherous than any Mediterraneana
storm whose crest and trough should literally touch heaven and hell.
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid re!
he was to pray later, when the full fury of that storm burst on him. But little, now,
does he envisage any such tragic answer to his prayer, and, having uttered it, he
kisses Desdemona and exclaims contradictorily:
And this, and this, the greatest discords be
Tat eer our hearts shall make!
Whereupon Turk-Iago mutters to himself,
O, you are well tuned now!
But Ill set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am.
To this unoverheard diabolic comment on the situation, Othello, utterly forget-
ting his prayer of the instant before for a vaster war of the elements, unwittingly
replies:
Our wars are done, the Turks are drownd.
. . . I prithee, good Iago . . . .
Tis, to put it mildly, is premature. Tere is one war that is not done, one Turk
that is not drowned, though he is destined before long to go down in a tempest
Othello 200
of his own raising. Prayers are always answered, but not always in the way or in
the sense that we intend.
Tus does Shakespeare tie Iago with the Turkand so with the Enemy, and
so with War. Te connection is too often reiterated to be coincidence. It is too
clearly contrived to be unconscious. It is plainly intentional.
So much for the rst two readings of this scene. (To something else in it to be
discovered only by a third or later reading I will return before I am done.)
VII
Desdemona is one of those touchstones in which Shakespeares plays abound.
Ask a group of people whether Desdemona is a weak or a strong character, and
they characterize themselves by their answers. Tere are those who would dilute
her away into a foolish and timid girl who makes a precipitate and unfortunate
misalliance with a foreigner much older than herself. Tat is to pay scant
attention to the picture Shakespeare gives of her as she was before the shadow
of tragedy touched her, the girl her father referred to as perfection. She was
nearer perfection than he suspected. He never dreamed what audacity there
was under her quietness and stillness. Desdemona was not absorbed merely in
household duties. She loved company, could be witty, could dance, play, and sing.
But her world was not bounded by these things either, and if she could do ne
needlework, be sure she could dream over it too. As her response to Othellos
tales of his adventures shows, she was in love with danger. It takes your shy ones
to be bold. And when she says, as he reports,
she wishd
Tat heaven had made her such a man,
whatever she meant by it and however Othello took it, Shakespeare plainly
contrived that Delphic line as a preparation for Othellos own O my fair
warrior! Tere was a boy within this girl, a mans courage at the heart of
this maiden whose very motion blushed at herself. Desdemona is merely
an extreme example of that union of feminine and masculine qualities that
Shakespeare plainly held essential for either the perfect man or the perfect
woman.
It is extraordinary (and especially to be noted for future reference) that
Iago gives the best full-length description of Desdemona in the play. In the
interlude at Cyprus before Othellos entrance after the storm, Desdemona
asks Iago how he would praise a woman so deserving that malice itself would
have to admit her merit. Malice itself of course is Iago and the deserving
woman Desdemona. She naturally does not recognize either of these facts;
he recognizes them both. And this is his description of the ideal woman he
knows her to be:
Othello in the Twentieth Century 201
She that was ever fair and never proud,
Had tongue at will and yet was never loud,
Never lackd gold and yet went never gay,
Fled from her wish and yet said, Now I may,
She that being angerd, her revenge being nigh,
Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure y,
She that in wisdom never was so frail
To change the cods head for the salmons tail,
She that could think and neer disclose her mind,
See suitors following and not look behind,
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,
and as Iago pauses, Desdemona asks, as he hoped she would, To do what?
To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.
O most lame and impotent conclusion!
she exclaims, never guessing what Iago has been up to. His picture reveals with
what completeness he can appraise both truth and beauty, and then revertas
he does the next second in an aside, with as little a web as this will I ensnare as
great a y as Cassioto the spider. Desdemona may be evaluated, she will never
be caughtin either senseby the intellect.
At some thoughts, says Dostoevsky, one stands perplexed, especially at the
sight of mens sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love.
Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may
subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of
all things and there is nothing else like it. It would be impertinent to say that
Desdemona believed that. She was itand it is superuous to believe what we
are. Desdemona a strong or weak character? Under her spell, one is tempted to
assert that she is the strongest character in all Shakespeare. Who can contend
with her for that eminence? Only the transformed Cordelia. But Desdemona did
not have to be transformed. While blows, physical, mental, and spiritual, rained
on her head, she held to her faith in goodness and to the end helped answer her
own prayer:
Heaven me such uses send,
Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.
O my fair warrior! Othello was right. Te divine Desdemona. Cassio did not
exaggerate.
And it is precisely one of her divinest acts that, curiously, is most often
set down to her discredit: the dropping of the handkerchief. Tat is a fault,
Othello 202
says Othello in the next scene, when he asks his wife to lend him the hand-
kerchief and she cannot produce it, and many readers agree that it was a fault, not
noticing that Shakespeare has been careful to show that, so far as Desdemona
is concerned, the loss of the handkerchief was not only not a fault, but actually
a virtue of an angelic order. Indeed, there is a sense in which Desdemona tells
no lie when she denies that the handkerchief is lost. Tings are lost through
carelessness or genuine accidentand the dropping of the handkerchief
came about through neither of these. Te truth, as contrasted with the fact,
of the matter is that neither Desdemona, nor accident, nor Fate, dropped the
handkerchief. Othello dropped it.
Des.: How now, my dear Othello!
Your dinner, and the generous islanders
By you invited, do attend your presence.
Oth.: I am to blame.
Des.: Why do you speak so faintly?
Are you not well?
Oth.: I have a pain upon my forehead here.
Des.: Faith, thats with watching; twill away again:
Let me but bind it hard, within this hour
It will be well.
Oth.: Your napkin is too little:
Let it alone. Come, Ill go in with you.
Des.: I am very sorry that you are not well.
And Othello and Desdemona go out as Emilia picks up the handkerchief.
It is vital here to visualize what has happened. Te stage business is left to
the actors and director, but surely there is only one right way of arranging it.
Othello, his mind full of the terrible doubts Iago has poured into it, explains his
embarrassed manner and faint voice as due to headache, as, indeed, they may
well be. Desdemona takes out her handkerchief and starts to bind his forehead.
At the moment, he cannot bear this act of aection with its physical contact
from the woman he has begun to doubt, and with a gesture of impatienceLet
it alonehe pushes her hand away, causing the handkerchief to drop, the it,
of course, referring not to the handkerchief, as it is often taken to, but to the
forehead. Now if Desdemona had loved Othello less, had been less genuinely
pained by his pain, or had valued a mere token of love above love itself, she
would naturally have noticed the fall of the handkerchief and would, however
unconsciously, have stooped and picked it up. But every ber of her soul and
body, conscious and unconscious, is so totally devoted to Othello that the
handkerchief for the moment ceases to exist. Te slightest deection of her eye
Othello in the Twentieth Century 203
in its direction as it dropped would have been a subtraction from the innity
of her lovejust as the movement of Othellos hand when he pushed her hand
away measured his distrust of that love, gave the villain his unique opportunity,
and sealed his own doom forever. Is there anything in all the drama of the world,
I wonder, to equal this in its own kind? Te moment when Romeo thrust his
rapier between Tybalt and Mercutio is similar. But that was a rapier, the moment
was patently critical, and the act, however impulsive, was a conscious one. Tis,
on the other hand, is only a handkerchief, the situation the most ordinary, and
the act one that almost anybody might be guilty of any day in his life. Tries
light as air. Was there ever a better demonstration that everything may depend
on anything? Who can control his fate? asks Othello when it is too late. And
there have been those who think that Shakespeare is asking the same question.
But in that case he is answering: Othello for one could have controlled hisand
Romeo for anotherif, like Desdemonas and Juliets, their bounty had been as
boundless as the sea, their love as deep. Tis is not fate. Tis is freedom.
But if the hero foredooms himself by causing the handkerchief to drop, the
villain does as much for himself just twenty-seven lines further on when he
snatches the handkerchief from his wifes hand. Emilia, as the event proves, was
Iagos oversight. It is in just such stupid things, says Dostoevsky (without any
allusion to Othello of course), that clever people are most easily caught. Te more
cunning a man is the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing.
But long before his wife turns the handkerchief against him, Iago uses it with
bloody eect on Othello. When, on top of his account of Cassios revelation in
his sleep, he tells him that that very day he saw Cassio wipe his beard with it,
Othello is nally convinced:
Now do I see tis true. Look here, Iago;
All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven.
Tis gone.
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!
Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,
For tis of aspics tongues! . . .
O, blood, blood, blood!
In the next scene where Othello demands the handkerchief and Desdemona
persists in turning the subject back to Cassiothe handkerchief, Cassio;
the handkerchief, Cassioshe is generally blamed, rst, for lying, and,
second, for an utterly unforgivable lack of sense and tact. But it is Othello,
not Desdemona, who really lies about the handkerchief in this scene! For the
express, if not conscious, purpose of frightening his wife, he invents a fabulous
Othello 204
story of the handkerchief s origin and magical properties, the falsity of which
Shakespeare is careful to bring out by having him give a true account of it at the
end of the play. Desdemona is naturally awed, and like a scared child evades her
husbands questions. Her guilt is venial compared with his. And it is precisely
her utter innocence that permits her insistence about Cassio. A guilty woman
would have sensed at once that she must keep clear of so dangerous a subject.
But to Desdemona a chance to help another is a command to do so instantly
and utterly. Truth and compassion are rare. Tact and worldliness are common.
Only those who think that the transformation of a childlike and loving woman
into a discreet and worldly one is a moral ascent can wish that Desdemona had
acted otherwise than she did in this distressing scene. If she exhibits a deciency
of common sense, she shows an abundance of a sense utterly uncommon. If it
had been a younger daughter entreating a father to forgive an older sister who
had fallen out of his favor, and not allowing herself to be put o, we would have
nothing but admiration for her. We should have nothing but admiration for
Desdemonas persistence in behalf of Cassio.
Desdemonas lie about the handkerchief is not the only one that is charged
against her. Tere is also what is generally known as her dying lie in the last
words that she speaks:
Emil.: O, who hath done this deed?
Des.: Nobody; I myself. Farewell!
Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. Dostoevsky thought it worth while to
write a novel of a thousand pages to bring home the truth that sat upon the lips
of the dying Desdemona. Te central doctrine of Father Zossima in Te Brothers
Karamazov is that each is to blame for everyone and for all things. Te plot of
the novel was conceived to illustrate and prove that paradox. Tere is hardly one
of its pages that has no bearing on it. Desdemona expressed it more briey: I
myself. Into those two words she put the whole mystery of the atonement. And
this is what the world chooses to call a lie.
VIII
If, so far, we have said more about Desdemona and Iago than about the one
who gives the title to the play, it is because he cannot be understood without
rst understanding them. Tey are the poles between which he moves. At the
opening of the story, before Iago begins to enmesh him, he seems as simple and
noble as Desdemona herself, and, however black without, is rightly described
as white within, made so partly by her love. But when the poison begins to
work, when that simplicity and nobility begin to be contaminated, then Othello
becomes an alternation of mighty opposites, not gray, but black-and-whitethe
Othello in the Twentieth Century 205
poet-barbarian, the hero-murderer, the paragon of self-control gone mad, the
harmonious nature to whom chaos comes again. Taking the whole play into
account, he is equally susceptible, almost, to the inuence of Desdemona and to
that of Iago. First Desdemona wins him; then Iago; then Desdemona, dead, wins
him back. Tere is the plot reduced to a dozen words. Tough he kills her, she
saves him. Perhaps that is Shakespeares unconscious prophecy of the destiny of
a mankind that in so many ways resembles Othello.
Tere is no other among his supreme plays against the plot and the psychology
of which so many objections have been brought as against Othello, and they are
leveled primarily against the conduct of its hero. Te improbabilities of King
Lear are another and more venial matter because of its remote and semimythical
setting and atmosphere. Othello is domestic, it is said, and should submit to more
exacting tests. A real Othello would have gone to his wife for an explanation.
(And, incidentally, a real Desdemona would have found a chance to explain.)
In answer, his defenders are compelled to plead his age, his brief acquaintance
with his wife, his ignorance of Venetian society and consequent self-distrust and
willingness to accept Iagos account of its habits.
Tis much is true at any rate: Othello regarded Desdemonas love for him
as a dream too beautiful to be true. Hence, when it is suggested to him that it
is not true, this is in a sense nothing but what he has been ready to believe all
along. What wonder that it is easy for him to dismiss his happiness as an illusion!
Desdemona love me! Impossible! When we waken from a dream we do not go
about searching for material evidence that it was not a dream after all. Neither
does Othello. It is the best things in him, his love, his imagination, his lack of
suspicion, his modesty, that give Iago his chance. But such considerations will
not silence the doubters. Apparently only some parallel incident from real life
would convince them that a man of Othellos temperament could act as Othello
is represented as acting in this play. Such an incident, it would seem, would be
rather dicult to produce. And yet, strangely, it can be produced. Under the title
of A Practical Joke, Dostoevskys wife relates a domestic incident which occurred
in the spring of 1876. If it had been expressly written to prove, a fortiori, the
truth of the psychology of Othello, it could scarcely have been improved, as
anyone who reads it will be bound to agree. It runs as follows:
On 18th May, 1876, an incident took place which I recall almost
with terror. Tis is how it happened. A new novel by Mme. Sophie
Smirnov entitled Te Strong Character was running as a serial then in
Te Otechestvennya Zapiski. Fiodor was on friendly terms with Sophie
Smirnov and valued her talent very highly. He was interested in her
latest work, and asked me to get him the numbers of the monthly
as they appeared. I chose those few days, when my husband had a
rest from his work on Te Journal of an Author, and brought him the
Othello 206
numbers of Te Otechestvennya Zapiski. But as journals are lent by the
libraries only for two or three days, I urged my husband to read the
journal quickly so as to avoid paying a ne at the library. So it was also
with the April number. Fiodor read the novel and spoke to me of how
our dear Sophie (whom I, too, valued very highly) had succeeded in
creating a certain male character in the novel. Tat evening my husband
went out to some gathering, and after seeing the children to bed, I
began reading the novel. In it, by the way, was published an anonymous
letter, sent by the villain to the hero, which ran as follows:
Dear Sir, Noblest Peter Ivanovich,
As I am a perfect stranger to you, but take an interest in your
feelings, I venture to address these lines to you. Your nobility is
suciently well-known to me, and my heart is pained at the idea,
that despite all your nobility, a certain person, who is very close
to you, is so basely deceiving you. Having gone away with your
blessing to a place four hundred miles o, she, like a delighted
dove spreading its wings and soaring upwards, has no mind to
return to the marital home. You have let her go to your own as well
as to her ruin, into the claws of a man who terries her, but who
fascinates her by his attering addresses. He has stolen her heart,
and there are no eyes more beautiful to her than his. Even her
little children are loathsome to her, if she gets no loving word from
him. If you want to know who this fellow the villain is, I must not
reveal his name, but look for yourself among those who frequent
your house, and beware of dark men. When you see the dark man,
who loves haunting your doors, have a good look at him. It is now
a long time since that fellow has crossed your path, and you are the
only one who does not notice it.
Nothing but your nobility compels me to reveal this secret
to you. And if you dont trust me, then have a look at the locket
which your wife wears round her neck, and see whose portrait she
wears in that locket near her heart.
vouv vvvv uxxxowx wvii-wisnvv.
I must say here that lately I had been in the best of moods; my husband
had had no epileptic ts for a long time, our children were perfectly
well, our debts were gradually being paid, and the success of Te Journal
of an Author was marked. All this strengthened my characteristic
cheerfulness, and under the inuence of the anonymous letter, just read,
a playful idea ashed across my mindto copy that letter (changing
the name and striking out certain lines) and to send it by post to
Othello in the Twentieth Century 207
Fiodor. It seemed to me that, as he had only yesterday read that letter
in Mme. Smirnovs novel, he would guess at once that it was a joke,
and we should have some fun. Tere also occurred another idea to me,
that my husband might take the letter seriously. In that case I was
interested to see how he would regard it: whether he would show it to
me, or throw it away into the waste-paper basket. As usual with me, I
had no sooner thought of the idea than I put it into execution. At rst
I wanted to write the letter in my own handwriting; but as I had been
copying for Fiodor every day, and my handwriting was too familiar to
him, I resolved to cover up my joke and began copying out the letter in
a rounder handwriting than mine. But it turned out to be a hard job,
and I spoilt several sheets before I managed to write the whole letter in
a uniform hand. Next morning I posted it, and in the afternoon it was
delivered to us together with other letters.
Tat day Fiodor was out later than usual, and returned only at ve
oclock and, not wanting to keep the children waiting for their dinner, he
just changed and came straight into the dining room, without looking
at his letters. Te dinner passed o merrily and noisily. Fiodor was in
a good mood; he talked a good deal and laughed, as he answered the
childrens questions. After dinner, with the usual cup of tea in his hand,
he went into his study. I went into the nursery, and in about ten minutes
time I entered the study to see the eect which my anonymous letter
had produced.
I sat down in my usual seat by the writing table, and purposely
asked Fiodor something to which he had to give an answer. But he kept
a gloomy silence, and paced the room with heavy steps. I saw he was
upset, and instantly I felt sorry. To break the silence I asked him: Why
are you so gloomy, Fedya?
Fiodor gave me an angry look, walked across the room a couple of
times and came to a stop just facing me.
You wear a locket? he asked in a choking voice.
I do.
Show it to me.
What for? You have seen it many times.
Showmethe locket! Fiodor shouted at the top of his voice.
I realised that my joke had gone too far, and in order to reassure him
I began undoing the collar of my dress. But I had no time to take the
locket out. Fiodor could not restrain the anger which had seized him.
He quickly rushed to me and caught my chain with all his strength. It
was a thin chain which he himself had bought for me in Venice. It broke
instantly, and the locket remained in my husbands hand. He quickly
swept round the table and with his head bent down, he began opening
Othello 208
the locket. Not knowing where to press the spring, he fussed over it for
a long time. I saw how his hands trembled, and the locket nearly slipped
from them on to the table, I was very sorry for him and terribly angry
with myself. I began to speak in a friendly tone, and proposed to open
the locket for him; but Fiodor with an angry nod of his head refused my
help. At last my husband opened the locket and found thereon one
side the portrait of our little daughter, on the otherhis own portrait.
He was absolutely confused, and kept on looking at the portrait in
silence.
Well, now, have you found it? I asked him. Fedya, you silly, how
could you believe an anonymous letter?
Fiodor instantly turned his face to me. How do you know of the
letter?
How? I myself sent it you!
What do you mean; you sent it me? It is incredible!
Ill prove it to you at once.
I went to the other table on which lay the copy of Te
Otechestvennya Zapiski, and got out several sheets of paper, on which I
had practised my changed handwriting.
Fiodor raised his hands in astonishment. And did you yourself
compose the letter?
Not at all. I simply copied it from Sophies novel. Surely you read
it yesterday? I thought you would guess at once.
Well, how could I remember! Anonymous letters are always in
that style. I simply cant understand why you sent it me?
I just wanted to have a lark, I explained.
How could you play such a joke? I have been in anguish for the
last half hour.
How could I know that you would be such an Othello, and get
into such a rage without giving yourself time for a moments thought?
One does not think in such cases. Ah, well, it is clear that you
have never experienced real love and real jealousy.
As for real love, I experience it even now, and as for my not
knowing real jealousy, it is your own fault. Why arent you unfaithful to
me? I laughed, wishing to divert his mood. Please, be unfaithful to me.
Even then I would be kinder than you are. I would not touch you, but I
would scratch out her eyes, the villainess . . . .
Well, you are laughing, Anechka, Fiodor began apologetically.
But think what a misfortune might have happened: indeed, in my
anger I could have strangled you. I may indeed say: God has taken pity
on our little ones. And suppose I had not found those portraits, a grain
of doubt as to your faithfulness would have remained in my mind for
Othello in the Twentieth Century 209
ever, and would have tortured me all my life. I implore you, do not play
with such things: in a rage I am not responsible for my actions.
During the conversation I felt a slight awkwardness in moving my
neck. I passed my handkerchief over it, and there was a line of blood on
it. Evidently the chain in being wrenched o by force had scratched my
skin. Seeing blood on my handkerchief, my husband was in despair.
My God, he exclaimed, what have I done? Anechka, my dear,
forgive me. I have wounded you. Does it pain you, tell me, does it pain
you very much?
I began to reassure him that there was no wound, but just
a mere scratch which would disappear by the morning. Fiodor was
seriously upset, and, above all, was ashamed of his t of anger. Te whole
evening was given up to his apologies and expressions of sympathy and
tenderness. And I, too, was boundlessly happy that my absurd joke had
ended so happily. I sincerely repented of having made Fiodor suer, and
I promised myself never again to play such a joke, having learnt from
this experience to what a furious, almost irresponsible state my dear
husband was capable of being reduced in moments of jealousy.
I still preserve the locket and the anonymous letter (of 18th
May, 1876).
Here, then, is another case of an older and experienced man married to a
younger wife, hardly able to believe, as other documents attest,
3
that his happiness
is real. Tis man, moreover, is by general consent one of the profoundest students
of human nature that ever lived, especially of its roots in the unconscious. Yet,
caught in the grip of ancestral jealousy, his wisdom vanishes as if it had never
existed and he becomes as helpless as a child. It would be tedious to point out
all the parallels between this narrative and Othello (the mention of which in
the narrative is itself signicant) down even to such a detail as the strangling.
Te same readiness of a profoundly loving nature to believe the worst, the same
precipitate rage and failure to give any opportunity to explain, the same centering
of everything on a token of love, with the other ending only perhaps because
Anna was able to produce the locket as Desdemona was not able to produce its
counterpart, the handkerchief. And the startling thing is that it all happened in
this later case without an Iagothe Russian Desdemona being her own Iago.
Ten how much more easily with him! Te fact that Dostoevsky and Othello,
too, were both prone to epileptic attacks is of more than passing interest, as is
the antipodal reversal of emotion in the two men when the truth appears. All
in all, the irrational and inundating character of jealousy has seldom been better
set forth than in this incident, not even in Leontes in Te Winters Tale, whom it
also helps us understand. I can testify from many experiments with this anecdote
that it ends for good and all the doubts of those who until they heard it thought
Othello 210
that in Othello Shakespeare had for once slipped up in his knowledge of human
nature or, worse, had sacriced that knowledge to theatrical eect.
IX
Tough the main stumbling block to readers of Othello is an incapacity to
realize what jealousy can be when aroused in a nature not easily jealous, there
are other sources of trouble, numerous specic moments in the play where
a failure to notice some tremendous trie in the text is the source of grave
misunderstanding. Tree of them may be mentioned.
1. In the scene, staged by Iago, where Othello oversees Cassio talking with
Bianca, supposedly of Desdemona, and catches fragments of their conversation,
it is frequently held that the Moor is too readily duped. Tis sort of thing is all
right on the stage, but it couldnt happen in life. Such objectors have forgotten
that Othello has but a moment before emerged from an epileptic t and is in no
condition to exercise his critical faculty.
2. When Othello, near the end, declares that Cassio has admitted his guilt,
he is usually taken to be speaking in general of the circumstantial case against
him and, more particularly, of Iagos loathsome account of Cassios confession
to him. But he means far more than this. In the darkness and confusion Othello
mistakes the voice of the wounded RoderigoO, villain that I am!for
Cassios. He hears what he fears. He thinks he has heard Cassio with his dying
words admit his guilt. It is een so, Othello assents. What more convincing
evidence could he ask for? Fail to take that O, villain that I am! into account,
and the mistake based on it, and the whole character of Othellos act in killing
Desdemona is altered. Te point is a capital one. Many must have detected it.
Yet of hundreds of readers of the play I have questioned I have yet to nd the
rst one who noticed it for himself. Even when asked to nd the passage in
which Othello hears with his own ears Cassios confession, few, even with the
text before them, can locate it.
3. And then the classic question: How could Desdemona speak after she
had been strangled? Medical authority has been marshaled on both sides of this
question. But Shakespeare was seeking poetical, rather than physiological or
anatomical truth (not that the former violates the latter). What happens at this
point should be plainand there is an old stage tradition, it is said, to support it.
Othello has failed to stie his wife, and, perceiving signs of life, does not again
try to do what he has attempted in vain, but stabs her at the words So, so. Not
only does this make understandable her speaking again before death: the irony,
the contrasts, and the symbolism agree in demanding what it is natural anyway
for Othello to have done in the circumstances. His earlier,
Yet Ill not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
Othello in the Twentieth Century 211
makes the inference almost irresistible that he will and does shed her blood, that
he will and does scar that skin. Blood, throughout Shakespeare as throughout
poetry, is the symbol of passion, of the instinctive as against the rational life. It
is needed here to make visible Othellos descent from the judicial and sacricial
mood in which he enters his wifes chamber
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,
to the fury at the last when he denies his victim even a moment for one prayer.
Te linking of Desdemona with snow at this point is a conrmation of the
symbolic color scheme of the play and eects a nal fearful contrast with the red
for which Othello has now come to stand. Moreover, Shakespeare seems to have
specically prepared for the moment when Othello stabs Desdemona by the
moment when he strikes her. In retrospect the earlier scene seems like a rehearsal
of the later. Tey are the two most nearly unendurable moments in the play. Te
sharpness of the contrast depends on Othellos nally doing with a knife what
he had already done with his hand.
X
Nowhere else in a single pair of characters, nor even in King Lear, does
Shakespeare more squarely confront the diabolic and the divine than in Iago
and Desdemona.
. . . do but see his vice;
Tis to her virtue a just equinox.
With a change of one word, Iago himself expresses it for us perfectly.
One might expect that in order to make the most of this contrast the two
would be brought into frequent contact in the course of the play. But they are
not. Tey are never alone together, and only twice are there what might be called
dialogues between them. Near the quay at Cyprus, partly to hide her fears about
Othello in the storm, Desdemona indulges in light banter with Iago and, as we
saw, he draws the ideal portrait which clandestinely is a picture of herself and
which he brings to a lame and impotent conclusion. No more is needed to
show his sensitiveness to moral beauty. Why did Shakespeare take the trouble
to demonstrate it so convincingly? What becomes of it during the rest of the
play? It is almost wholly repressed. Tat it is capable of rising above the surface,
however, is proved by that extraordinary exclamation near the end,
If Cassio do remain,
He hath a daily beauty in his life
Tat makes me ugly.
Othello 212
But if the daily beauty in Cassios life makes Iago ugly, how about the hourly, the
momentary beauty in Desdemonas? What does that do to him? Te poet, if I
am not mistaken, dedicates the one highly dramatic scene in which the two talk
with each other to bringing that out.
It comes just after the fearful brothel scene in which Othello has ung all
the evil he imagines straight in his wifes face. On his exit, Desdemona, stunned,
sinks into a state beyond the relief of tears. She ominously bids Emilia lay her
wedding sheets on her bed and summon to comfort her in her distressof all
people on earththe very one who has caused it! At the nadir of her despair she
will consult Iago on what she can do to win her lord again. Iago comes, and we
have as psychologically interesting a scene as there is in the play. Desdemonas
condition of semi-somnolence, just preceding it, is the correlative and opposite
of Othellos epileptic seizure. In each case a scene with Iago follows. Te same
thing that Iago does to Othello in the earlier one is done to him, in a reversed
sense, in the later one. Here, if ever, in this interview between the villain and the
heroine, we have a chance to study the eect on each other of something close
to pure evil and pure good. By way of mediation, Emilia, who is a paradoxical
mixture of the two, is also present.
Te eect of evil on good may be dismissed in a word by saying that good
here not only does not resist evil, it is unaware of its presence. It acts as if it did
not existwhich is another way of saying that it treats the evil man as if he were
good.
Does evil reciprocate and treat good as if it did not exist? It does not. It
cannot. Evil is forever uneasy in the presence of good, and it is signicant to
begin with that Desdemona and Emilia in this scene each speak almost twice
as many words as does the usually voluble Iago. But the quality as well as the
quantity of his utterances is altered.
Do not weep, do not weep. Alas the day!
I pray you be content.
Go in, and weep not; all things shall be well.
In their simplicity and sympathy the words sound utterly unlike anything else
in Iagos role. Exactly! it will be said. Here the mans histrionic powers are at
their acme. He can feign even pity and compassion perfectly. Here he sinks to
his lowest pointpretending to comfort the one he is about to destroy. Tese,
if any were ever shed, are crocodile tears. Of course they are crocodile tears.
Short of throwing up his whole plot, Iago is compelled to go on acting. But what
taught this crocodile-Iago to simulate sympathy so consummately? What if not
the very buried sympathy that Desdemonas presence had activated in him? Te
words that crocodile-Iago needs for his part are the very ones that a genuinely
sympathetic Iago might have spoken. It is as if an inner prompter handed them
Othello in the Twentieth Century 213
to him at a moment when he was at a loss for the next words in his role. Who is
that Inner Prompter? An unconscious as well as a conscious Iago are present in
this scene exactly as there were two Shylocks to oer to Antonio in one breath, as
it were, the loan without interest and the bloody bond. Te parallel is startling. To
feign goodness successfully it is not enough that we should have had experience
with goodness in the past; we must retain potential goodness. Otherwise the
counterfeit will be crude. Iagos is so true it could be passed for genuine coin. It
was the unconscious Iago that made it so.
Whatever unique thing, good or bad, any individual may have made out of
his inherited qualities, there underneath, however deep down, the human nature
into which he was born is bound to survive in its general composite trend and
upshot as incarnated in the lives of all his ancestors, a mingled web of light
and dark. Only let that individual be taken o guard, suddenly confronted with
some circumstance or person alien to the world to which he has conditioned
himself, and that fundamental human nature will reassert itself. Te situation
here is precisely that. Unless Shakespeare is contravening his seemingly universal
practice and is making Iago a pure abstraction, the rule is bound not to fail. It
does not fail. And this scene is inserted, I believe, to show that it does not fail.
Imagine any man calloused by bitterness and cruelty. If a child, especially a
beautiful child, were without warning to throw her arms about his neck, nestle
up to him condingly, and speak words of piercing loveliness, is it conceivable
that he would not be moved? No matter how he might try to hide it or deny it
to himself, that remnant of goodness in him that nothing can eradicate would
respond. Dostoevsky chose precisely this situation for the crisis of the rst of his
great masterpieces, Crime and Punishment. It is at the moment when the little
girl Polenka throws her arms about the murderer Raskolnikov and kisses him
that he is reborn. He reverts a moment later, as might be expected, to his most
devastating power-fantasies. But the seed has been sown. Long afterward it
comes to fruit. Mutatis mutandis, Shakespeare, if I am not mistaken, gives us the
same situation here, if with the other outcome. We never see Iago repentant as
we do Raskolnikov, but the eect of his brief interview with Desdemona shakes
him to the foundation.
From the moment he enters he is scarcely recognizable as the same man we
have known under the name of Iago, and except for three sharp sentences he
speaks to his wife which make the dierence the more conspicuous, the man who
addresses Desdemona remains unrecognizable throughout the scene. If anyone
ignorant of the story were to read it by itself, he would be utterly bewildered. One
Iago is so tender and sympathetic, the other so coarse and ill-tempered.
4
But
we who have read the play, if we have been attentive, will recall certain passages
from Iagos own role that throw light on this moment of it, for Shakespeare is
nothing if not preparatory. First, we remember his penetrating description of the
moral beauty of the woman into whose intimate presence he now comes for the
Othello 214
rst time since the occasion near the quay when he uttered it. He stressed then,
particularly, her power to subdue all feeling of anger or revenge, precisely the
emotions that almost any woman would have given unrestrained vent to after
being struck and insulted by her husband as Desdemona had been just before
this very meeting. She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, that
she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. Tat
sentence, too, might well come to mind. And those strange words in soliloquy:
Now, I do love her too,
Not out of absolute lust,
and, nally, the words to Roderigo, as, they say, base men being in love have then
a nobility in their natures more than is native to them, which puts in a nutshell
the very truth on which we are now insisting: that no matter how wicked a man
may become, the nobility that is an inevitable part of his inheritance will be there
underneath ready to appear under the right conditions. Are the conditions right
for the appearance of the nobility in this base man? Tey obviously are, whether
he knows it or not.
At the end of their interview Desdemona kneels. It is left to the actress
and to our imaginations to decide whether she kneels just to heaven or to Iago
also, whom she is beseeching to go to her lord on her behalf. If, as I believe, it
should be to Iago too, we have a counterpart of the famous scene where the
sainted Father Zossima kneels to the potential parricide, Dmitri Karamazov, in
Dostoevskys novel. (And if we want to press the parallel we may even believe
that something deep in Desdemonas unconscious mind saw into the future and
was seeking less a reconciliation between herself and her lord than one between
Iago and Othello, of any breach between whom she is of course at the moment
unaware.) It is noteworthy that Desdemonas nal words in this interview are
practically a paraphrase of Shakespeares own confession of faith about love in
the 116th sonnet, culminating, in her case, in the lines:
Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.
If anything was capable of it, this longest and in many respects loveliest speech
in the role of the laconic Desdemona, from which these words come, must have
moved Iago to the depths, imparting a meaning he had never dreamed of to his,
Now I do love her too. If it did shake him, it is the supreme tribute to her in
the entire play: even Iago could not escape the eect of her presence. Tat the
whole interview did move him profoundly Shakespeare all but proves, where it
Othello in the Twentieth Century 215
is his habit to prove such things, in the little scene that immediately followsin
that and in the rest of the play.
When Desdemona goes out, Roderigo enters, and in the rst part of what
ensues we see Iago for the rst time at his wits end, unable to devise anything
by way of answer to Roderigos importunities. In his brief and stalling replies to
his dupes reiterated complaints Shakespeare is plainly registering the profound
and disturbing eect that Desdemonaand incidentally Emiliahas just had
on him. She has sapped his power. In thirty-four lines of text, these are Iagos
speechesRoderigo says all the rest:
What in the contrary?
Will you hear me, Roderigo?
You charge me most unjustly.
Well; go to; very well.
Very well.
You have said now.
Is this Iago? To paraphrase Lodovicos words about Othello: Is this the
resourceful nature that obstacles could not daunt? He resembles himself as
little as Falsta does himself at the moment of his rejection, or as Falsta
resembles that other Falsta who creeps into the basket of foul linen in the
home of Mistress Ford. It is no answer to say that Iago, before the scene is
over, does partly recover his wits. How came he to lose them? And such wits
as he does recover resemble those of some common ruan rather than those
of the archpsychologist that Iago was at his intellectual best. Te expedient he
recommends to Roderigo is the desperate one of knocking out Cassios brains.
It is not coincidence, but more nearly cause and eect, that from the presence
of Desdemona he steps immediately to this fatal mistake. Te man has himself
received a death blow. For the rst time in his life he has encountered a force
more powerful than his own diabolic nature. What has happened to him he
doubtless does not understand. He is intelligent, but not intelligent enough
for that. Never again in the play do we nd him perfectly poised and sure of
himself as he had been previously. He almost hesitates about Cassios death.
Te nal reason he gives for it, the daily beauty of Cassios life, shows that
the beauty of Desdemona has given him a mortal (or perhaps we should say
an immortal) wound. He would have been incapable of oering that highly
uncharacteristic reason before he had that fatal interview. He is defeated. From
his rst false step he goes on to another and another until he sinks into that
nal terric silence that is but a prelude to the silence of death. Te Turk to
whom he is compared went down under the waters of the Mediterranean. He
goes down under the same element in its symbolic sense.
Othello 216
XI
Into what element did Desdemona pass at death?
Our imaginations cannot help asking that question, however idle it may
seem. If Iago went down under water, Desdemona might well have been lifted
into air. If his end was silence, hers should be harmony. If he descended to hell,
she should have ascended to heaven, or, as we are more prone to say today, if
he reverted to the unconscious, she must have been transformed into spirit.
Water, silence, hell; air, harmony, heaven: that is what the symbols seem to
call for. But this is the merest fancy unless there is warrant for it in the text.
Tese are castles in the air unless there is a Shakespearean foundation to put
under them.
We have noted over and over Shakespeares habit of concealing, in what seem
like brief digressions or superuous scenes, clues to the over- and undermeanings
of his playsas in the garden scene in Richard II, the dawn passage in Julius
Caesar, or the one in Hamlet where the Prince teases Polonius about the cloud.
If readers of Othello were asked to select the most supererogatory passage
in the play, they would probably be unanimous, unless some forgot its very
existence, in picking the opening of Act III where Cassio comes in with some
musicians who are prepared to play but are peremptorily dismissed by the Clown
(for there is a clown in Othello):
Clown: Ten put up your pipes in your bag, for Ill away. Go; vanish into
air, away! (Exeunt Musicians)
Tis brief overture to what is admittedly one of the greatest acts Shakespeare
ever wrote is a tolerably obvious allegory of that sudden interruption of the music
of Othellos love which is to be the subject of the acta fact that in itself justies
us, apart from its very inconsequentiality, in searching it for other clues.
Te passage emphasizes the fact that it is upon wind instruments that the
musicians are prepared to play, and the Clown himself plays on that idea when
he tells them to vanish into air. Vanish into your proper element, he might have
said. Te other thing stressed is the idea of inaudible music:
Clown: But, masters, heres money for you: and the general so likes your
music, that he desires you, for loves sake, to make no more noise with it.
First Mus.: Well, sir, we will not.
Clown: If you have any music that may not be heard, tot again: but, as
they say, to hear music the general does not greatly care.
First Mus.: We have none such, sir.
Tis sounds like the idlest fooling, and on the surface it is just that. But when
we remember Keatss
Othello in the Twentieth Century 217
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeard,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone,
we see that, so far from mere fooling, this idea of inaudible music is the idea of
poetry itself brought down by the Clown to the level of burlesque and parody.
Te quintessence of a poem is precisely its music that may not be heard. May
not, notice, nor cannot.
Where, audible or inaudible, is there music in Othello? Where, especially, if
anywhere, is there wind music?
We think immediately of the storm o Cyprus. Tere the gale roared
until Montano cried, Te wind hath spoke aloud. Tere it tossed water
on the very stars, bringing a chaos of the elements that forecasts the chaos
that is come again in Othellos soul when Iago loosens the moral hurricane
that parts the Moor from his wife more violently than ever the physical
tempest did. Te Turks go down in the rst storm. Turk-Iago goes down in
the second one. Othello and Desdemona were parted by the rst storm, but
were reunited after it. Tey were parted by the second one. Was there a Second
Cyprus?
If Shakespeare carries his symbolism through with Iago, is it inconceivable
that he may have done the same with Desdemona and Othello? Here, if
anywhere, it would be natural to seek the poetry of this poem, the music in this
play that may not be heard.
A scientist gets his hypothesis from he does not always know where. He
subjects it to the test of facts, and accepts it or rejects it accordingly. So it
should be with the interpretation of a work of literary art. Where a suggested
reading comes from is not the important question. Te important question
is whether it can pass the test of the text. If not, however alluring, it must be
dismissed.
Let us look at the storm scene for a third time.
A Sea-port in Cyprus. An open place near the quay. (Cyprus, remember, is an
island, and we know what an island came to mean to Shakespeare near the end
of his life.)
Tree gures with wind-blown garments and spray-spattered hair are gazing
out over mountainous waves toward a misty horizon:
What from the cape can you discern at sea?
Nothing at all: it is a high-wrought ood.
I cannot, twixt the heaven and the main,
Descry a sail.
Othello 218
Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;
A fuller blast neer shook our battlements.
If it hath ruand so upon the sea,
What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,
Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?
A segregation of the Turkish eet.
For do but stand upon the foaming shore,
Te chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds;
Te wind-shakd surge, with high and monstrous mane,
Seems to cast water on the burning Bear
And quench the guards of the ever-xed pole:
I never did like molestation view
On the enchafed ood.
A storm that assaults heaven itself! Which storm is this? Te storm in which
the Turks went down, or the storm for which Othello prayed?
May the winds blow till they have wakend death!
And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas
Olympus-high, and duck again as low
As hells from heaven!
a storm that did indeed awaken death and duck as low as hell:
Whip me, ye devils, . . .
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid re!
What place in the story have we reached? On which side of death are we?
And now, suddenly, there is a fourth speaker on the shore. Our wars are done.
A ship has made port, he announces, bringing one Michael Cassio. Te Turks are
drowned. And while that thought, the messenger declares, comforts Cassio,
yet he looks sadly
And prays the Moor be safe, for they were parted
With foul and violent tempest.
And like an echo from some remote region of
old, unhappy, far-o things,
And battles long ago,
Othello in the Twentieth Century 219
we hear a voice saying,
Dear general, I never gave you cause.
But the confusionor is it the clarity?increases. Here is Cassio himself! And
as he joins the others on the shore, he cries,
O, let the heavens
Give him defence against the elements,
For I have lost him on a dangerous sea.
You have indeed, Cassio, and on a vaster sea than any Mediterranean.
Is he well shippd? a voice inquires.
Cas.: His bark is stoutly timberd, and his pilot
Of very expert and approvd allowance;
Terefore my hopes, not surfeited to death,
Stand in bold cure.
In spite of all, Cassio has kept faith.
And now there is a sudden cry within, A sail, a sail, a sail!
Te town is empty; on the brow o the sea
Stand ranks of people, and they cry, A sail!
We see them gazing out with tense faces over the gray oncoming waves. But
who are they? Whom are they awaiting? What town have they left empty?
And for a second we remember another unidentied little town that was left
similarly desolate:
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can eer return.
Perhaps these watchers for a sail, likewise, will never return to their homes.
But the ship is in. And whom has it brought?
Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,
Othello 220
Te gutterd rocks and congregated sands,
Traitors ensteepd to clog the guiltless keel,
As having sense of beauty, do omit
Teir mortal natures, letting go safely by
Te divine Desdemona.
Desdemona? Ten she escaped the traitors? She survived the storm? It cannot
be. But it isfor here she is herself:
O, behold,
Te riches of the ship is come on shore! . . .
Hail to thee, lady! and the grace of heaven,
Before, behind thee, and on every hand,
Enwheel thee round!
Heaven again? We were told it was Cyprus. But wherever she is she acknowledges
the welcome. Her brow, however, shows she is troubled.
Des.: What tidings can you tell me of my lord?
Cas.: He is not yet arrivd . . . .
Des.: O! but I fearHow lost you company?
Cas.: Te great contention of the sea and skies
Parted our fellowship.
Will her fears, this time, be justied?
Again there is a cry: But hark! a sail that is echoed from within. A sail, a
sail!
Again it cannot be. But again it is. Othello has come to port. Tere is an
interlude. Ten he enters and takes Desdemona in his arms:
O my fair warrior!
My dear Othello!
It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me. O my souls joy!
If after every tempest come such calms . . . .
And in a kind of divine confusion we ask:
After which storm?
Tis is what I have long been in the habit of calling Te Sixth Act of Othello.
Here is music played on the wind instruments of the storm, which, like the storm
itself, reaches the stars. Here, as surely as music is harmony, is music that may not
be heard. Here is form that, like the form of Keatss urn, does
Othello in the Twentieth Century 221
tease us out of thought
As doth eternity.
Like a face in the embers, it is there for those who see it, not there for those who
do not.
Bradley speaks of Othello as having less cosmic sweep than the other
Tragedies. We seem to be aware in it, he says, of a certain limitation, a partial
suppression of that element in Shakespeares mind which unites him with the
mystical poets and with the great musicians and philosophers. It is true that
the atmosphere of Othello is more realistic and modern than that of the other
Tragedies. But that is precisely what makes such eects as his use of the storm
in this play the more miraculous. It is the virtue of Othello thatlike the poetry
of Emily Dickinsonit synthesizes the domestic and the cosmic.
But you have forgotten one thing, someone can be counted on to object just
here. Iago, too, survived the storm o Cyprus. It was he, indeed, under whose
conduct Desdemona came safely through! And the tone of triumph implies,
What can you say to that?
How fortunate that there are prose and reason in the world to keep the poetry
straight! Why not go even further and point out that this whole play is obviously
rubbish because all the Italians in it speak English?
But the objection about Iago is overruled even on its own premise. Te Turk
goes down. And if Desdemona reaches heaven after the Second Storm, it is
partly because of the very tempest through which Iago led her. Here Shakespeare
plumbs the very depths of evil. Tere were two Iagos: the one who went down,
and the good Iago whom Desdemona trusted and who drew the picture of her
on the quay.
Here, if ever, we see the dierence between logic and imagination, between
factual and poetical truth. To the intellect this diagram is what it is, no more,
no less:
But the eye inevitably supplements it by drawing two lines parallel to the right-
hand sides of the inner gure, completing the outer one. To the reason, the fact
that Othello and Desdemona were parted by a physical tempest, then reunited,
then parted by a moral one, sets up no presumption whatever that they will again
be reunited. Te opposite assumption is just as logical, and probably even more
convincing to the intellect, which is skeptical by nature. But, to the imagination,
what may be called the transcendental reunion of Othello and Desdemona is
as irresistible as the completion of the geometrical diagram is to the eye. For, as
Blake is continually reminding us, imagination is more analogous to sensation
Othello 222
than to thought. Imagination is spiritual sensationTat most pure spirit of
sense. It is its own evidence.
Beauty itself doth of itself persuade,
says Shakespeare in Lucrece. As Longinus saw, long ago, it does not convince by
logic, it takes captive. What happens after death is strictly an unknown quantity
to reason. But as certainly as the value of x in an equation can be calculated
if the other quantities are known, so certainly can the imagination calculate
the unknown factors in life from the known ones. Poetry is the art of spiritual
mensuration. Its validity or lack of validity can be referred to no standard
outside itself and us. It depends solely on its impact on our imaginations. So
with such creations of the Imagination as heaven and hell. Whether they are
true or not is the most important thing in the world. Whether or not they exist
is a senseless question. He who has never hoped shall never receive what he
has never hoped for.
XII
Whoever is content to see Iago go down under water with the Turks and does
not hope, in this high Heracleitean sense, to behold Desdemona vanish into
air or catch a glimpse of her in heaven will be compelled to admit at any rate
that she is alive after death, on earth, both within the play and without it. Cassio,
near the end, tells how, in a letter found in the slain Roderigos pocket, there is a
revelation of Iagos original plan to have Roderigo brave Cassio upon the watch
after Iago has made him drunk.
. . . even but now he spake,
says Cassio, wondering as if at a miracle,
After long seeming dead.
But if Roderigo spoke after death, Desdemona not only spoke but, in the words
of Wordsworths great sonnet, lived, and acted, and served the future hour. Tat
which acts is actual, and it is Desdemona who eects the nal transformation in
Othello that imparts to his last words their preternatural calm. In that last speech
he describes himself as one who
Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 223
It is strange that nearly all editors have preferred to this reading of the Folio that
of the Quarto,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away . . .
in the face of Othellos I kissd thee ere I killd thee a moment later, which is
as clear an identication of the murderer-Othello with Judas as could be asked.
(Te Othello who now kisses her is another man.)
Who the pearl was the base Judean threw away all the world knows, nal
proof, were it needed, that just as the poet ties Iago and war together in
this play, so he links Desdemona with the spirit that brings war to an end.
Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant, cried Tacitus, compressing into one of
the compactest sentences ever written the fatal error we make in confusing the
end of war and what ends war. At the end of war, if there is not a solitude,
then there is a truce, a fresh balance of power, or an imposed reign of order
(order, the counterfeit of peace) which holds until the old conict breaks out
anew. And meanwhile men go on seeking some law, or formula, or system that
will end the rule of Mars. Only the simple way, that is at once the easiest and
the hardest, is not tried. Here you are teaching all the time, says a character
in Chekhov, fathoming the depths of the ocean, dividing the weak from the
strong, writing books and challenging to duelsand everything remains as
it is; but, behold! some feeble old man will mutter just one word with a holy
spirit, . . . and everything will be topsy-turvy, and in Europe not one stone
will be left standing upon another. One word with a holy spirit. It was such
a word that Desdemona spoke. She is what the greatest sages from Laotse to
Tolstoy have taught. She shows that to be is better than to act, for through
whoever is the gods themselves act.
Te secret of social and political strife, of conict between nations, is
only that of individual and domestic strife writ large. War and peace, says
Othello, conrming Hamlet and carrying the thought from its negative to its
positive phase, are states of the soul. War in the military sense is the outer
manifestation of war in the psychological sense preexisting in the inner worlds
of its fomenters and participants. Tat is not saying that outer conditions have
nothing to do with the production of war. But it is only as those conditions rst
produce a military state of the soul that they secondly produce war in its more
generally accepted sense. And, no matter how adverse, they do not necessarily
produce a military state of the soul, as Desdemona shows; on the contrary, as
Iago shows, that state is a most potent producer of those very conditions. It was
to demonstrate this double truth that Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment.
Othello demonstrates it even more compactly.
Othello 224
NOTES
1. See the chapter on Hamlet.
2. All this is remarkably confirmed by a dream of a young theological student
that Jung records. The dreamer saw a magician dressed wholly in black who,
he nevertheless knew, was the white magician. Presently the figure was joined
by another, the black magician, dressed wholly in white. It was obviously at the
moment Cinthios tale activated, as the psychologists say, the same ancestral
images in Shakespeares mind that Othello and Iago were conceived. There could
scarcely be better proof that he who takes Othello as just cheater, just realism, or
even as just drama, is missing something. Another confirmation of this imagery is
to be found in Blakes The Little Black Boy with its line: And I am black, but
O! my soul is white.
3. It is of interest that Dostoevsky proposed to this woman through the medium
of an invented story, just as Othello wooed Desdemona through stories into which
a considerable element of unconscious invention undoubtedly entered.
4. When Emilia suggests that some cozening slave is the author of this slan-
der, Iago turns it off with a Fie, there is no such man. Whereupon Desdemona
exclaims, If any such there be, Heaven pardon him. A halter pardon him! and
hell gnaw his bones! cries Emilia. Our emotional responses to these two lines
measure the respective amounts of Desdemona and Emilia there are in our own
natures. Emilia is the Gratianoon an immensely higher planeof this scene.
She is a safety valve for the crowds feelings.
1961W. H. Auden.
The Joker in the Pack, from Encounter
W. H. Auuen (1907-1973) vus one of tle rost furous poets of tle
century; lis criticisr vus ulso influentiul. Tlis essuy vus first puElisleu
in tle |ournul Lnccunter unu luter uppeureu in Auuen`s collection of
essuys 7he D,er's Hand.
Reason is Gods gift; but so are the passions.
Reason is as guilty as passion.
J. H. NEWMAN
I
Any consideration of the Tragedy of Othello must be primarily occupied, not with
its ocial hero but with its villain. I cannot think of any other play in which
only one character performs personal actionsall the deeds are Iagosand
all the others without exception only exhibit behavior. In marrying each other,
Othello and Desdemona have performed a deed, but this took place before the
play begins. Nor can I think of another play in which the villain is so completely
triumphant: everything Iago sets out to do, he accomplishes(among his goals,
I include his self-destruction. Even Cassio, who survives, is maimed for life.
Othello 262
If Othello is a tragedyand one certainly cannot call it a comedyit is tragic
in a peculiar way. In most tragedies the fall of the hero from glory to misery and
death is the work, either of the gods, or of his own freely chosen acts, or, more
commonly, a mixture of both. But the fall of Othello is the work of another
human being; nothing he says or does originates with himself. In consequence
we feel pity for him but no respect; our aesthetic respect is reserved for Iago.
Iago is a wicked man. Te wicked man, the stage villain, as a subject of serious
dramatic interest does not, so far as I know, appear in the drama of Western
Europe before the Elizabethans. In the mystery plays, the wicked characters, like
Satan or Herod, are treated comically, but the theme of the triumphant villain
cannot be treated comically because the suering he inicts is real.
A distinction must be made between the villainous charactergures like
Don John in Much Ado, Richard III, Edmund in Lear, Iachimo in Cymbeline
and the merely criminal charactergures like Duke Antonio in Te Tempest,
Angelo in Measure for Measure, Macbeth or Claudius in Hamlet. Te criminal
is a person who nds himself in a situation where he is tempted to break the
law and succumbs to the temptation: he ought, of course, to have resisted the
temptation, but everybody, both on stage and in the audience, must admit that,
had they been placed in the same situation, they, too, would have been tempted.
Te opportunities are exceptionalProspero, immersed in his books, has left the
government of Milan to his brother, Angelo is in a position of absolute authority,
Claudius is the Queens lover, Macbeth is egged on by prophecies and heaven-
sent opportunities, but the desire for a dukedom or a crown or a chaste and
beautiful girl are desires which all can imagine themselves feeling.
Te villain, on the other hand, is shown from the beginning as being a
malcontent, a person with a general grudge against life and society. In most cases
this is comprehensible because the villain has, in fact, been wronged by Nature or
Society: Richard III is a hunchback, Don John and Edmund are bastards. What
distinguishes their actions from those of the criminal is that, even when they
have something tangible to gain, this is a secondary satisfaction; their primary
satisfaction is the iniction of suering on others, or the exercise of power over
others against their will. Richard does not really desire Anne; what he enjoys is
successfully wooing a lady whose husband and father-in-law he has killed. Since
he has persuaded Gloucester that Edgar is a would-be parricide, Edmund does
not need to betray his father to Cornwall and Regan in order to inherit. Don
John has nothing personally to gain from ruining the happiness of Claudio and
Hero except the pleasure of seeing them unhappy. Iachimo is a doubtful case of
villainy. When he and Posthumus make their wager, the latter warns him:
If she remain unseduced, you not making it appear otherwise, for your
ill opinion and thassault you have made on her chastity you shall answer
me with your sword.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 263
To the degree that his motive in deceiving Posthumus is simply physical fear of
losing his life in a duel, he is a coward, not a villain; he is only a villain to the
degree that his motive is the pleasure of making and seeing the innocent suer.
Coleridges description of Iagos actions as motiveless malignancy applies in
some degree to all the Shakespearian villains. Te adjective motiveless means,
rstly, that the tangible gains, if any, are clearly not the principal motive and,
secondly, that the motive is not the desire for personal revenge upon another for
a personal injury. Iago himself proers two reasons for wishing to injure Othello
and Cassio. He tells Roderigo that, in appointing Cassio to be his lieutenant,
Othello has treated him unjustly, in which conversation he talks like the
conventional Elizabethan malcontent. In his soliloquies with himself, he refers to
his suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have made him a cuckold, and here he
talks like the conventional jealous husband who desires revenge. But there are, I
believe, insuperable objections to taking these reasons, as some critics have done,
at their face value. If one of Iagos goals is to supplant Cassio in the lieutenancy,
one can only say that his plot fails for, when Cassio is cashiered, Othello does
not appoint Iago in his place. It is true that, in Act III, Scene 3, when they swear
blood-brotherhood in revenge, Othello concludes with the words
. . . now thou are my lieutenant
to which Iago replies:
I am your own for ever
but the use of the word lieutenant in this context refers, surely, not to a public
military rank, but to a private and illegal delegation of authoritythe job
delegated to Iago is the secret murder of Cassio, and Iagos reply, which is a
mocking echo of an earlier line of Othellos, refers to a relation which can never
become public. Te ambiguity of the word is conrmed by its use in the rst line
of the scene which immediately follows. Desdemona says
Do you know, sirrah, where the Lieutenant Cassio lies?
(One should beware of attaching too much signicance to Elizabethan
typography, but it is worth noting that Othellos lieutenant is in lower case
and Desdemonas in upper). As for Iagos jealousy, one cannot believe that a
seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards
Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the rst person to suer. Not only
is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional
tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her indelity as something
already disposed of.
Othello 264
Some such squire it was
Tat turned your wit, the seamy side without
And made you to suspect me with the Moor.
At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will
not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at
Desdemonas seduction is made. Iago does not make an assault on her virtue
himself, he does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents
Roderigo from getting anywhere near her.
Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself.
Te revengers greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face
You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with
impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what
you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you.
When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he
has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having
been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of
refusing to explain.
In Act II, Scene 1, occur seven lines which, taken in isolation, seem to make
Iago a seriously jealous man.
Now I do love her too.
Not out of absolute lust (though peradventure
I stand accountant for as great a sin)
But partly led to diet my revenge
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leaped into my seat; the thought whereof
Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my vitals.
But if spoken by an actor with serious passion, these lines are completely at
variance with the rest of the play, including Iagos other lines on the same
subject.
And it is thought abroad, that twixt my sheets
Hes done my oce: I know not if t be true
Yet I, for mere suspicion in that kind.
Will do, as if for surety.
It is not inconceivable, given the speed at which he wrote, that, at some point
in the composition of Othello, Shakespeare considered making Iago seriously
jealous and, like his prototype in Cinthio, a would-be seducer of Desdemona,
and that, when he arrived at his nal conception of Iago, he overlooked the
Othello in the Twentieth Century 265
incompatibility of the poisonous mineral and the wife-for-wife passages with
the rest.
In trying to understand Iagos character one should begin, I believe,
by asking why Shakespeare should have gone to the trouble of inventing
Roderigo, a character who has no prototype in Cinthio. From a stage directors
point of view, Roderigo is a headache. In the rst act we learn that Brabantio
had forbidden him the house, from which we must conclude that Desdemona
had met him and disliked him as much as her father. In the second act, in
order that the audience shall know that he has come to Cyprus, Roderigo has
to arrive on the same ship as Desdemona, yet she shows no embarrassment
in his presence. Indeed, she and everybody else, except Iago, seem unaware
of his existence, for Iago is the only person who ever speaks a word to him.
Presumably, he has some ocial position in the army, but we are never told
what it is. His entrances and exits are those of a puppet: whenever Iago has
company, he obligingly disappears, and whenever Iago is alone and wishes to
speak to him, he comes in again immediately.
Moreover, so far as Iagos plot is concerned, there is nothing Roderigo
does which Iago could not do better without him. He could easily have found
another means, like an anonymous letter, of informing Brabantio of Desdemonas
elopement and, for picking a quarrel with a drunken Cassio, he has, on his own
admission, other means handy.
Tree lads of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits
Tat hold their honours in a wary distance,
Te very elements of this warlike isle
Have I to-night ustered with owing cups.
Since Othello has expressly ordered him to kill Cassio, Iago could have
murdered him without fear of legal investigation. Instead, he not only chooses
as an accomplice a man whom he is cheating and whose suspicions he has
constantly to allay, but also a man who is plainly inecient as a murderer and
also holds incriminating evidence against him.
A man who is seriously bent on revenge does not take unnecessary risks
nor conde in anyone whom he cannot trust or do without. Emilia is not, as in
Cinthio, Iagos willing accomplice, so that, in asking her to steal the handkerchief,
Iago is running a risk, but it is a risk he has to take. By involving Roderigo in his
plot, he makes discovery and his own ruin almost certain. It is a law of drama
that, by the nal curtain, all secrets, guilty or innocent, shall have been revealed
so that all, on both sides of the footlights, know who did or did not do what,
but usually the guilty are exposed either because, like Edmund, they repent and
confess or because of events which they could not reasonably have foreseen.
Don John could not have foreseen that Dogberry and Verges would overhear
Othello 266
Borachios conversation, nor Iachimo that Pisanio would disobey Posthumus
order to kill Imogen, nor King Claudius the intervention of a ghost.
Had he wished, Shakespeare could easily have contrived a similar kind of
exposure for Iago. Instead, by giving Roderigo the role he does, he makes Iago as
a plotter someone devoid of ordinary worldly common sense.
One of Shakespeares intentions was, I believe, to indicate that Iago desires
self-destruction as much as he desires the destruction of others but, before
elaborating on this, let us consider Iagos treatment of Roderigo, against
whom he has no grievanceit is he who is injuring Roderigoas a clue to his
treatment of Othello and Cassio.
When we rst see Iago and Roderigo together, the situation is like that in
a Ben Johnson comedya clever rascal is gulling a rich fool who deserves to
be gulled because his desire is no more moral than that of the more intelligent
avowed rogue who cheats him out of his money. Were the play a comedy, Roderigo
would nally realize that he had been cheated but would not dare appeal to the
law because, if the whole truth were made public, he would cut a ridiculous or
shameful gure. But, as the play proceeds, it becomes clear that Iago is not simply
after Roderigos money, a rational motive, but that his main game is Roderigos
moral corruption, which is irrational because Roderigo has given him no cause
to desire his moral ruin. When the play opens, Roderigo is shown as a spoiled
weakling, but no worse. It may be foolish of him to hope to win Desdemonas
aection by gifts and to employ a go-between, but his conduct is not in itself
immoral. Nor is he, like Cloten in Cymbeline, a brute who regards women as mere
objects of lust. He is genuinely shocked as well as disappointed when he learns
of Desdemonas marriage, but continues to admire her as a woman full of most
blessed condition. Left to himself, he would have had a good bawl, and given her
up. But Iago will not let him alone. By insisting that Desdemona is seducible and
that his real rival is not Othello but Cassio, he brings Roderigo to entertain the
idea, originally foreign to him, of becoming a seducer and of helping Iago to ruin
Cassio. Iago had had the pleasure of making a timid conventional man become
aggressive and criminal. Cassio beats up Roderigo. Again, at this point, had he
been left to himself, he would have gone no further, but Iago will not let him
alone until he consents to murder Cassio, a deed which is contrary to his nature,
for he is not only timid but also incapable of passionate hatred.
I have no great devotion to the deed:
And yet he has given me satisfying reasons.
Tis but a man gone.
Why should Iago want to do this to Roderigo? To me, the clue to this and
to all Iagos conduct is to be found in Emilias comment when she picks up the
handkerchief.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 267
My wayward husband hath a hundred times
Wooed me to steal it . . .
what hell do with it
Heaven knows, not I,
I nothing but to please his fantasy.
As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else does. She
does not know, any more than the others, that he is malevolent, but she does
know that her husband is addicted to practical jokes. What Shakespeare gives
us in Iago is a portrait of a practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind, and
perhaps the best way of approaching the play is by a general consideration of
the Practical Joker.
II
Social relations, as distinct from the brotherhood of a community, are only
possible if there is a common social agreement as to which actions or words are
to be regarded as serious means to a rational end and which are to be regarded
as play, as ends in themselves. In our culture, for example, a policeman must be
able to distinguish between a murderous street ght and a boxing match, or a
listener between a radio play in which war is declared and a radio news-broadcast
announcing a declaration of war.
Social life also presupposes that we may believe what we are told unless
we have reason to suppose, either that our informant has a serious motive for
deceiving us, or that he is mad and incapable himself of distinguishing between
truth and falsehood. If a stranger tries to sell me shares in a gold mine, I shall
be a fool if I do not check up on his statements before parting with my money,
and if another tells me that he has talked with little men who came out of a
ying saucer, I shall assume that he is crazy. But if I ask a stranger the way to the
station, I shall assume that his answer is truthful to the best of his knowledge,
because I cannot imagine what motive he could have for misdirecting me.
Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness
and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and
that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another.
Two men, dressed as city employees, block o a busy street and start digging it
up. Te trac cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has
a practical explanationa water main or an electric cable is being repairedand
make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private
citizens in disguise who have no business there.
All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean
that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some aw in
society which is a hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. Tat it should
be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped
Othello 268
is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are
strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all the inhabitants know
each other personally, the deception would be impossible.
A real community, as distinct from social life, is only possible between
persons whose idea of themselves and others is real, not fantastic. Tere is,
therefore, another class of practical jokes which is aimed at particular individuals
with the reformatory intent of de-intoxicating them from their illusions. Tis
kind of joke is one of the stock devices of comedy. Te deceptions practiced on
Falsta by Mistress Page, Mistress Ford and Dame Quickly, or by Octavian on
Baron Ochs are possible because these two gentlemen have a fantastic idea of
themselves as lady-charmers; the result of the jokes played upon them is that
they are brought to a state of self-knowledge and this brings mutual forgiveness
and true brotherhood. Similarly, the mock deaths of Hero and of Hermione are
ways of bringing home to Claudio and to Leontes how badly they have behaved
and of testing the genuineness of their repentance.
All practical jokes, friendly, harmless or malevolent, involve deception, but not
all deceptions are practical jokes. Te two men digging up the street, for example,
might have been two burglars who wished to recover some swag which they
knew to be buried there. But, in that case, having found what they were looking
for, they would have departed quietly and never been heard of again, whereas,
if they are practical jokers, they must reveal afterwards what they have done or
the joke will be lost. Te practical joker must not only deceive but also, when he
has succeeded, unmask and reveal the truth to his victims. Te satisfaction of the
practical joker is the look of astonishment on the faces of others when they learn
that all the time they were convinced that they were thinking and acting on their
own initiative, they were actually the puppets of anothers will. Tus, though his
jokes may be harmless in themselves and extremely funny, there is something
slightly sinister about every practical joker, for they betray him as someone who
likes to play God behind the scenes. Unlike the ordinary ambitious man who
strives for a dominant position in public and enjoys giving orders and seeing
others obey them, the practical joker desires to make others obey him without
being aware of his existence until the moment of his theophany when he says:
Behold the God whose puppets you have been and behold, he does not look like
a god but is a human being just like yourselves. Te success of a practical joker
depends upon his accurate estimate of the weaknesses of others, their ignorances,
their social reexes, their unquestioned presuppositions, their obsessive desires,
and even the most harmless practical joke is an expression of the jokers contempt
for those he deceives.
But, in most cases, behind the jokers contempt for others lies something else,
a feeling of self-insuciency, of a self lacking in authentic feelings and desires
of its own. Te normal human being may have a fantastic notion of himself,
but he believes in it: he thinks he knows who he is and what he wants so that
Othello in the Twentieth Century 269
he demands recognition by others of the value he puts upon himself and must
inform others of what he desires if they are to satisfy them.
But the self of the practical joker is unrelated to his joke. He manipulates
others but, when he nally reveals his identity, his victims learn nothing about
his nature, only something about their own; they know how it was possible for
them to be deceived but only why he chose to deceive them. Te only answer
that any practical joker can give to the question: Why did you do this? is Iagos:
Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
In fooling others, it cannot be said that the practical joker satises any
concrete desire of his nature: he has only demonstrated the weaknesses of others
and all he can now do, once he has revealed his existence, is to bow and retire
from the stage. He is only related to others, that is, so long as they are unaware
of his existence: once they are made aware of it, he cannot fool them again, and
the relation is broken o.
Te practical joker despises his victims, but at the same time he envies them
because their desires, however childish and mistaken, are real to them, whereas
he has no desire which he can call his own. His goal, to make game of others,
makes his existence absolutely dependent upon theirs; when he is alone, he is a
nullity. Iagos self-description, I am not what I am, is correct and the negation of
the Divine I am that I am. If the word motive is given its normal meaning of a
positive purpose of the self like sex, money, glory, etc., then the practical joker
is without motive. Yet the professional practical joker is certainly driven, like a
gambler, to his activity, but the drive is negative, a fear of lacking a concrete self,
of being nobody. In any practical joker to whom playing such jokes is a passion,
there is always an element of malice, a projection of his self-hatred onto others,
and in the ultimate case of the absolute practical joker, this is projected onto
all created things. Iagos statement, I am not what I am, is given its proper
explanation in the Credo which Boito wrote for him in his libretto for Verdis
opera.
Credo in un Dio crudel che mha creato
Simile a se, e che nellira io nomo.
Dall vilt dun germe e dun atomo
Vile son nato,
Son scellerto
Perch son uomo:
E sento il fango originario in me
E credo luom gioco diniqua sorte
Dal germe della culla
Al verme dellavel.
Vien dopo tanto irrision la Morte
E poi? La Morte e il Nulla.
Othello 270
Equally applicable to Iago is Valrys Ebauche dun serpent. Te serpent speaks
to God the Creator thus
O Vanit! Cause Premire
Celui qui rgne dans les Cieux
Dune voix qui fut la lumire
Ouvrit lunivers spacieux.
Comme las de son pur spectacle
Dieu lui-mme a rompu lobstacle
De sa parfaite ternit;
Il se t Celui qui dissipe
En consquences son Principe,
En toiles son Unit.
And of himself thus
Je suis Celui qui modie
the ideal motto, surely, for Iagos coat of arms.
Since the ultimate goal of Iago is nothingness, he must not only destroy
others, but himself as well. Once Othello and Desdemona are dead his
occupations gone.
To convey this to an audience demands of the actor who plays the role
the most violent contrast in the way he acts when Iago is with others and the
way he acts when he is left alone. With others, he must display every virtuoso
trick of dramatic technique for which great actors are praised, perfect control
of movement, gesture, expression, diction, melody and timing, and the ability
to play every kind of role, for there are as many honest Iagos as there are
characters with whom he speaks, a Roderigo Iago, a Cassio Iago, an Othello Iago,
a Desdemona Iago, etc. When he is alone, on the other hand, the actor must
display every technical fault for which bad actors are criticized. He must deprive
himself of all stage presence, and he must deliver the lines of his soliloquies in
such a way that he makes nonsense of them. His voice must lack expression, his
delivery must be atrocious, he must pause where the verse calls for no pauses,
accentuate unimportant words, etc.
III
If Iago is so alienated from nature and society that he has no relation to time
and placehe could turn up anywhere at any timehis victims are citizens of
Shakespeares Venice. To be of dramatic interest, a character must to some degree
be at odds with the society of which he is a member, but his estrangement is
normally an estrangement from a specic social situation.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 271
Shakespeares Venice is a mercantile society, the purpose of which is not
military glory but the acquisition of wealth. However, human nature being what
it is, like any other society, it has enemies, trade rivals, pirates, etc., against whom
it must defend itself, if necessary by force. Since a mercantile society regards
warfare as a disagreeable, but unfortunately sometimes unavoidable, activity and
not, like a feudal aristocracy, as a form of play, it replaces the old feudal levy by
a paid professional army, nonpolitical employees of the State, to whom ghting
is their specialized job.
In a professional army, a soldiers military rank is not determined by his social
status as a civilian, but by his military eciency. Unlike the feudal knight who
has a civilian home from which he is absent from time to time but to which,
between campaigns, he regularly returns, the home of the professional soldier is
an army camp and he must go wherever the State sends him. Othellos account
of his life as a soldier, passed in exotic landscapes and climates, would have struck
Hotspur as unnatural, unchivalrous and no fun.
A professional army has its own experiences and its own code of values which
are dierent from those of civilians. In Othello, we are shown two societies, that
of the city of Venice proper and that of the Venetian army. Te only character
who, because he is equally estranged from both, can simulate being equally
at home in both, is Iago. With army folk he can play the blunt soldier, but in
his rst scene with Desdemona upon their arrival in Cyprus, he speaks like a
character out of Loves Labours Lost. Cassios comment
Madam, you may relish him more in the soldier than the scholar
is provoked by envy. Iago has excelled him in the euphuistic irtatious style
of conversation which he considers his forte. Roderigo does not feel at home,
either with civilians or with soldiers. He lacks the charm which makes a man a
success with the ladies, and the physical courage and heartiness which make a
man popular in an army mess. Te sympathetic aspect of his character, until Iago
destroys it, is a certain humility; he knows that he is a person of no consequence.
But for Iago, he would have remained a sort of Bertie Wooster, and one suspects
that the notion that Desdemonas heart might be softened by expensive presents
was not his own but suggested to him by Iago.
In deceiving Roderigo, Iago has to overcome his consciousness of his
inadequacy, to persuade him that he could be what he knows he is not,
charming, brave, successful. Consequently, to Roderigo and, I think, to
Roderigo only, Iago tells direct lies. Te lie may be on a point of fact, as when
he tells Roderigo that Othello and Desdemona are not returning to Venice
but going to Mauritania, or a lie about the future, for it is obvious that even if
Desdemona is seducible, Roderigo will never be the man. I am inclined to think
that the story Iago tells Roderigo about his disappointment over the lieutenancy
Othello 272
is a deliberate fabrication. One notices, for example, that he contradicts himself.
At rst he claims that Othello had appointed Cassio in spite of the request of
three great ones of the city who had recommended Iago, but then a few lines
later, he says
Preferment goes by letter and aection,
Not by the old gradation where each second
Stood heir to the rst.
In deceiving Cassio and Othello, on the other hand, Iago has to deal with
characters who consciously think well of themselves but are unconsciously
insecure. With them, therefore, his tactics are dierent; what he says to them is
always possibly true.
Cassio is a ladies man, that is to say, a man who feels most at home in feminine
company where his looks and good manners make him popular, but is ill at ease
in the company of his own sex because he is unsure of his masculinity. In civilian
life he would be perfectly happy, but circumstances have made him a soldier
and he has been forced by his profession into a society which is predominantly
male. Had he been born a generation earlier, he would never have found himself
in the army at all, but changes in the technique of warfare demand of soldiers,
not only the physical courage and aggressiveness which the warrior has always
needed, but also intellectual gifts. Te Venetian army now needs mathematicians,
experts in the science of gunnery. But in all ages, the typical military mentality is
conservative and resents the intellectual expert.
A fellow
Tat never set a squadron in the eld
Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster . . . mere prattle without practise
Is all his soldiership
is a criticism which has been heard in every army mess in every war. Like so
many people who cannot bear to feel unpopular and therefore repress their
knowledge that they are, Cassio becomes quarrelsome when drunk, for alcohol
releases his suppressed resentment at not being admired by his comrades in
arms and his wish to prove that he is what he is not, as manly as they are. It is
signicant that, when he sobers up, his regret is not that he has behaved badly
by his own standards but that he has lost his reputation. Te advice which Iago
then gives him, to get Desdemona to plead for him with Othello, is good advice
in itself, for Desdemona obviously likes him, but it is also exactly the advice a
character-type like Cassio will be most willing to listen to, for feminine society
is where he feels most at home.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 273
Emilia informs Cassio that, on her own initiative, Desdemona has already
spoken on his behalf and that Othello has said he will take the safest occasion
by the front to restore him to his post. Hearing this, many men would have been
content to leave matters as they were, but Cassio persists: the pleasure of a heart-
to-heart talk with a lady about his fascinating self is too tempting.
While he is talking to Desdemona, Othello is seen approaching and she
says;
Stay and hear me speak.
Again, many men would have done so, but Cassios uneasiness with his own
sex, particularly when he is in disgrace, is too strong and he sneaks away, thus
providing Iago with his rst opportunity to make an insinuation.
Cassio is a ladies man, not a seducer. With women of his own class, what he
enjoys is socialized eroticism; he would be frightened of serious personal passion.
For physical sex he goes to prostitutes and when, unexpectedly, Bianca falls in
love with him, like many of his kind, he behaves like a cad and brags of his
conquest to others. Tough he does not know who the owner of the handkerchief
actually is, he certainly knows that Bianca will think that it belongs to another
woman, and to ask her to copy it is gratuitous cruelty. His smiles, gestures and
remarks about Bianca to Iago are insuerable in themselves; to Othello, who
knows that he is talking about a woman, though he is mistaken as to her identity,
they are an insult which only Cassios death can avenge.
In Cinthio nothing is said about the Moors color or religion, but Shakespeare
has made Othello a black Negro who has been baptized.
No doubt there are dierences between color prejudice in the twentieth
century and color prejudice in the seventeenth and probably few of Shakespeares
audience had ever seen a Negro, but the slave trade was already ourishing and
the Elizabethans were certainly no innocents to whom a Negro was simply a
comic exotic. Lines like
. . . an old black ram
is tupping your white ewe . . .
Te gross clasps of a lascivious Moor . . .
What delight shall she have to look on the devil
are evidence that the paranoid fantasies of the white man in which the Negro
appears as someone who is at one and the same time less capable of self-control
and more sexually potent than himself, fantasies with which, alas, we are only too
familiar, already were rampant in Shakespeares time.
Te Venice of both Te Merchant of Venice and Othello is a cosmopolitan
society in which there are two kinds of social bond between its members, the
Othello 274
bond of economic interest and the bond of personal friendship, which may
coincide, run parallel with each other or conict, and both plays are concerned
with an extreme case of conict.
Venice needs nanciers to provide capital and it needs the best general it can
hire to defend it; it so happens that the most skillful nancier it can nd is a Jew
and the best general a Negro, neither of whom the majority are willing to accept
as a brother.
Tough both are regarded as outsiders by the Venetian community, Othellos
relation to it diers from Shylocks. In the rst play, Shylock rejects the
Gentile community as rmly as the Gentile community rejects him; he is just
as angry when he hears that Jessica has married Lorenzo as Brabantio is about
Desdemonas elopement with Othello. In the second place, while the profession
of usurer, however socially useful, is regarded as ignoble, the military profession,
even though the goal of a mercantile society is not military glory, is still highly
admired and, in addition, for the sedentary civilians who govern the city, it has
a romantic exotic glamour which it cannot have in a feudal society in which
ghting is a familiar shared experience.
Tus no Venetian would dream of spitting on Othello and, so long as there is
no question of his marrying into the family, Brabantio is delighted to entertain
the famous general and listen to his stories of military life. In the army, Othello
is accustomed to being obeyed and treated with the respect due to his rank and,
on his rare visits to the city, he is treated by the white aristocracy as someone
important and interesting. Outwardly, nobody treats him as an outsider as they
treat Shylock. Consequently, it is easy for him to persuade himself that he is
accepted as a brother and when Desdemona accepts him as a husband, he seems
to have proof of this.
It is painful to hear him say
But that I love the gentle Desdemona
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription or conne
For the seas worth
for the condition of the outsider is always unhoused and free. He does not or will
not recognize that Brabantios view of the match
If such actions may have passage free,
Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be
is shared by all his fellow senators, and the arrival of news about the Turkish eet
prevents their saying so because their need of Othellos military skill is too urgent
for them to risk oending him.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 275
If one compares Othello with the other plays in which Shakespeare treats
the subject of male jealousy, Te Winters Tale and Cymbeline, one notices that
Othellos jealousy is of a peculiar kind.
Leontes is a classical case of paranoid sexual jealousy due to repressed
homosexual feelings. He has absolutely no evidence that Hermione and Polixenes
have committed adultery and his entire court are convinced of their innocence, but
he is utterly possessed by his fantasy. As he says to Hermione: Your actions are my
dreams. But, mad as he is, the twice-nine changes of the Watery Starre which
Polixenes has spent at the Bohemian court, make the act of adultery physically
possible so that, once the notion has entered his head, neither Hermione nor
Polixenes nor the court can prove that it is false. Hence the appeal to the Oracle.
Posthumus is perfectly sane and is convinced against his will that Imogen has
been unfaithful because Iachimo oers him apparently irrefutable evidence that
adultery has taken place.
But both the mad Leontes and the sane Posthumus react in the same way;
My wife has been unfaithful; therefore she must be killed and forgotten. Tat
is to say, it is only as husbands that their lives are aected. As king of Bohemia,
as a warrior, they function as if nothing has happened.
In Othello, thanks to Iagos manipulations, Cassio and Desdemona behave
in a way which would make it not altogether unreasonable for Othello to
suspect that they were in love with each other, but the time factor rules out the
possibility of adultery having been actually committed. Some critics have taken
the double time in the play to be merely a dramaturgical device for speeding the
action which the audience in the theatre will never notice. I believe, however,
that Shakespeare meant the audience to notice it as, in Te Merchant of Venice, he
meant them to notice the discrepancy between Belmont time and Venice time.
If Othello had simply been jealous of the feelings for Cassio he imagined
Desdemona to have, he would have been sane enough, guilty at worst of a lack
of trust in his wife. But Othello is not merely jealous of feelings which might
exist; he demands proof of an act which could not have taken place, and the
eect on him of believing in this physical impossibility goes far beyond wishing
to kill her: it is not only his wife who has betrayed him but the whole universe;
life has become meaningless, his occupation is gone.
Tis reaction might be expected if Othello and Desdemona were a pair like
Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra whose love was an all-absorbing
TristanIsolde kind of passion, but Shakespeare takes care to inform us that it
was not.
When Othello asks leave to take Desdemona with him to Cyprus, he stresses
the spiritual element in his love.
I therefore beg it not
To please the palate of my appetite
Othello 276
Nor to comply with heat, the young aects
In me defunct, and proper satisfaction,
But to be free and bounteous to her mind.
Tough the imagery in which he expresses his jealousy is sexualwhat other
kind of images could he use?Othellos marriage is important to him less as a
sexual relationship than as a symbol of being loved and accepted as a person, a
brother in the Venetian community. Te monster in his own mind too hideous
to be shown is the fear he has so far repressed that he is only valued for his social
usefulness to the City. But for his occupation, he would be treated as a black
barbarian.
Te overcredulous, overgood-natured character which, as Iago tells us, Othello
had always displayed is a telltale symptom. He had had to be overcredulous in
order to compensate for his repressed suspicions. Both in his happiness at the
beginning of the play and in his cosmic despair later, Othello reminds one more
of Timon of Athens than of Leontes.
Since what really matters to Othello is that Desdemona should love him as
the person he really is, Iago has only to get him to suspect that she does not, to
release the repressed fears and resentments of a lifetime, and the question of what
she has done or not done is irrelevant.
Iago treats Othello as an analyst treats a patient except that, of course,
his intention is to kill not to cure. Everything he says is designed to bring to
Othellos consciousness what he has already guessed is there. Accordingly, he has
no need to tell lies. Even his speech, I lay with Cassio lately, can be a truthful
account of something which actually happened: from what we know of Cassio,
he might very well have such a dream as Iago reports. Even when he has worked
Othello up to a degree of passion where he would risk nothing by telling a direct
lie, his answer is equivocal and its interpretation is left to Othello.
Othello: What hath he said?
Iago: Faith that he didI know not what he did.
Othello: But what?
Iago: Lie
Othello: With her?
Iago: With her, on her, what you will.
Nobody can oer Leontes absolute proof that his jealousy is baseless: similarly,
as Iago is careful to point out, Othello can have no proof that Desdemona really
is the person she seems to be.
Iago makes his rst decisive impression when, speaking as a Venetian with
rsthand knowledge of civilian life, he draws attention to Desdemonas hood-
winking of her father.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 277
Iago: I would not have your free and noble nature
Out of self-bounty be abused, look tot:
I know our country disposition well:
In Venice they do let God see the pranks
Tey dare not show their husbands: their best conscience
Is not to leavet undone but keept unknown.
Othello: Dost thou say so?
Iago: She did deceive her father, marrying you:
And when she seemed to shake and fear your looks,
She loved them most.
Othello: And so she did.
Iago: Why, go to then!
She that so young could give out such a seeming
To seal her fathers eyes up, close as oak.
He thought twas witchcraft.
And a few lines later, he refers directly to the color dierence.
Not to aect many proposed matches,
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends,
Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural.
But pardon me: I do not in position
Distinctly speak of her, though I may fear
Her will, recoiling to her better judgment
May fall to match you with her country-forms,
And happily repent.
Once Othello allows himself to suspect that Desdemona may not be the person
she seems, she cannot allay the suspicion by speaking the truth but she can
appear to conrm it by telling a lie. Hence the catastrophic eect when she
denies having lost the handkerchief.
If Othello cannot trust her, then he can trust nobody and nothing, and
precisely what she has done is not important. In the scene where he pretends that
the Castle is a brothel of which Emilia is the Madam, he accuses Desdemona,
not of adultery with Cassio, but of nameless orgies.
Desdemona: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
Othello: Was this fair paper, this most goodly book
Made to write whore upon. What committed?
Committed? O thou public commoner,
Othello 278
I should make very forges of my cheeks
Tat would to cinders burn up modesty
Did I but speak thy deeds.
And, as Mr. Eliot has pointed out in his farewell speech, his thoughts are not
on Desdemona at all but upon his relation to Venice, and he ends by identifying
himself with another outsider, the Moslem Turk who beat a Venetian and
traduced the state.
Everybody must pity Desdemona, but I cannot bring myself to like her. Her
determination to marry Othelloit was she who virtually did the proposing
seems the romantic crush of a wily schoolgirl rather than a mature aection; it
is Othellos adventures, so unlike the civilian life she knows, which captivate her
rather than Othello as a person. He may not have practiced witchcraft, but, in
fact, she is spellbound. And despite all Brabantios prejudices, her deception of
her own father rather makes an unpleasant impression: Shakespeare does not
allow us to forget that the shock of the marriage kills him.
Ten, she seems more aware than is agreeable of the honor she has done
Othello by becoming his wife. Where Iago tells Cassio that our Generals wife
is now the General and, soon afterwards, soliloquizes
His soul is so enfettered to her love
Tat she may make, unmake, do what she list
Even as her appetite shall play the god
With his weak function
he is, no doubt, exaggerating, but there is much truth in what he says. Before
Cassio speaks to her, she has already discussed him with her husband and learned
that he is to be reinstated as soon as is opportune. A sensible wife would have
told Cassio this and left matters alone. In continuing to badger Othello, she
betrays a desire to prove to herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband
do as she pleases. She is frightened because she is suddenly confronted with a
man whose sensibility and superstitions are alien to her.
Tough her relation with Cassio is perfectly innocent, one cannot but share
Iagos doubts as to the durability of the marriage. It is worth noting that, in the
willow-song scene with Emilia, she speaks with admiration of Lodovico and
then turns to the topic of adultery. Of course, she discusses this in general terms
and is shocked by Emilias attitude, but she does discuss the subject and she does
listen to what Emilia has to say about husbands and wives. It is as if she had
suddenly realized that she had made a msalliance and that the sort of man she
ought to have married was someone of her own class and color like Lodovico.
Given a few more years of Othello and of Emilias inuence and she might well,
one feels, have taken a lover.
Othello in the Twentieth Century 279
IV
And so one comes back to where one started, to Iago, the sole agent in the
play. A play, as Shakespeare said, is a mirror held up to nature. Tis particular
mirror bears the date 1604, but, when we look into it, the face that confronts
us is our own in the middle of the twentieth century. We hear Iago say the
same words and see him do the same things as an Elizabethan audience heard
and saw, but what they mean to us cannot be exactly the same. To his rst
audience and even, maybe, to his creator, Iago appeared to be just another
Machiavellian villain who might exist in real life but with whom one would
never dream of identifying oneself. To us, I think, he is a much more alarming
gure; we cannot hiss at him when he appears as we can hiss at the villain
in a Western movie because none of us can honestly say that he does not
understand how such a wicked person can exist. For is not Iago, the practical
joker, a parabolic gure for the autonomous pursuit of scientic knowledge
through experiment which we all, whether we are scientists or not, take for
granted as natural and right?
As Nietzsche said, experimental science is the last ower of asceticism. Te
investigator must discard all his feelings, hopes and fears as a human person and
reduce himself to a disembodied observer of events upon which he passes no
value judgment. Iago is an ascetic. Love he says, is merely a lust of the blood,
and a permission of the will.
Te knowledge sought by science is only one kind of knowledge. Another
kind is that implied by the Biblical phrase, Ten Adam knew Eve, his wife, and
it is this kind I still mean when I say, I know John Smith very well. I cannot
know in this sense without being known in return. If I know John Smith well,
he must also know me well.
But, in the scientic sense of knowledge, I can only know that which does not
and cannot know me. Feeling unwell, I go to my doctor who examines me, says
You have Asian u, and gives me an injection. Te Asian virus is as unaware of
my doctors existence as his victims are of a practical joker.
Further, to-know in the scientic sense means, ultimately, to-have-power-
over. To the degree that human beings are authentic persons, unique and self-
creating, they cannot be scientically known. But human beings are not pure
persons like angels; they are also biological organisms, almost identical in their
functioning, and, to a greater or lesser degree, they are neurotic, that is to say,
less free than they imagine because of fears and desires of which they have no
personal knowledge but could and ought to have. Hence, it is always possible to
reduce human beings to the status of things which are completely scientically
knowable and completely controllable.
Tis can be done by direct action on their bodies with drugs, lobotomies,
deprivation of sleep, etc. Te diculty about this method is that your victims
will know that you are trying to enslave them and, since nobody wishes to be
Othello 280
a slave, they will object, so that it can only be practiced upon minorities like
prisoners and lunatics who are physically incapable of resisting.
Te other method is to play on the fears and desires of which you are aware
and they are not until they enslave themselves. In this case, concealment of your
real intention is not only possible but essential for, if people know they are being
played upon, they will not believe what you say or do what you suggest. An
advertisement based on snob appeal, for example, can only succeed with people
who are unaware that they are snobs and that their snobbish feelings are being
appealed to and to whom, therefore, your advertisement seems as honest as Iago
seems to Othello.
Iagos treatment of Othello conforms to Bacons denition of scientic enquiry
as putting Nature to the Question. If a member of the audience were to interrupt
the play and ask him: What are you doing? could not Iago answer with a boyish
giggle, Nothing. Im only trying to nd out what Othello is really like? And we
must admit that his experiment is highly successful. By the end of the play he does
know the scientic truth about the object to which he has reduced Othello. Tat
is what makes his parting shot, What you know, you know, so terrifying for, by
then, Othello has become a thing, incapable of knowing anything.
And why shouldnt Iago do this? After all, he has certainly acquired
knowledge. What makes it impossible for us to condemn him self-righteously
is that, in our culture, we have all accepted the notion that the right to know is
absolute and unlimited. Te gossip column is one side of the medal; the cobalt
bomb the other. We are quite prepared to admit that, while food and sex are
good in themselves, an uncontrolled pursuit of either is not, but it is dicult
for us to believe that intellectual curiosity is a desire like any other, and to
realize that correct knowledge and truth are not identical. To apply a categorical
imperative to knowing, so that, instead of asking, What can I know? we ask,
What, at this moment, am I meant to know?to entertain the possibility that
the only knowledge which can be true for us is the knowledge we can live up
tothat seems to all of us crazy and almost immoral. But, in that case, who are
we to say to IagoNo, you mustnt.
297
OTHELLO
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
At the start of the twenty-first century, it seems that the issues in Othello
that primarily concern, trouble, and excite critics are those related to race and
gender. Some of the foremost current critics, however, examine these issues in
the light of an older tradition, one that emphasizes character and aesthetics.
An example is Frank Kermodes essay from his book Shakespeares Language,
excerpted here.
Othello is often used to reect contemporary realities and even to comment on
social issues. A 2006 production staged in Decatur, Alabama, which included
images of the World Trade Center towers, emphasized the military aspect of
the play, putting most of the cast in uniforms and making Cyprus suggestive of
Bagdad. In 2005, the BBC broadcast a two-hour Othello, adapted by Andrew
Davis, in which John Othello, a detective in Scotland Yard, is confronted by
the problems of racial discord, anxiety about terrorism, and gender inequality
currently disturbing English tranquility. In 2001, Tim Blake Nelsons lm, O,
transformed Othello into a teen movie about a black high-school basketball star,
his envious best friend, and his white girlfriend.
2000Frank Kermode.
Othello, from Shakespeares Language
Frunk Kerroue is one of Brituin`s rost respecteu literury critics. He lus
vritten runy liglly uccluireu Eooks, incluuing Shakeseare's Language,
7he Age cj Shakeseare, unu l|eces cj M, M|nd, u collection of lis essuys.
If we are to believe the latest Arden editor, Othello is closer in date to Hamlet than
we used to think, for he says it was composed in late 1601. At any rate, there is
a cluster of plays near this date, a year or two after Hamlet and probably close to
Twelfth Night and Troilus and Cressida.
1
Others prefer a date nearer 1604; that
would twin the play with Measure for Measure, the plot for which derives from
Othello 298
the collection of stories by Giraldo Cinthio. Te issues are very complicated, and
there is little certainty in any of the results.
Te existence of two texts (the Quarto of 1622 and the Folio of 1623)
creates problems dierent from those encountered in Hamlet or King Lear but
no less dicult. Tey remain unlikely to be solved in such a way as to command
anything approaching editorial consensus, and I do not in any case aspire to assist
the editors in their enquiries, but with Othello as with Hamlet it is necessary on
occasion to say where a particular reading originates and why one has chosen it.
Textual scholars, loving their trade, will not agree, but critics hoping to comment
on the language of the plays must think it unfortunate that the texts of three of
the greatest of them should present these virtually intractable textual problems.
Fortunately the plays remain for the most part intelligible, and susceptible to
comment on their greatly varying styles.
What is extraordinary is the extent of the dierences between plays written,
one after another, in the rst years of the new century. Te style of Othello we may
think of as having been formed while Shakespeare was reading for the task
mostly of Cinthios novella, which he handles with notable skill and freedom, but
also current books about the Mediterranean world.
Since the principal characters of the story were soldiers, the setting couldnt
be other than military in character. Shakespeare had plenty of experience doing
the militarythe life of various kinds of soldier is amply recorded in the History
plays and All s Well, and is not absent from Hamletbut he had not hitherto
attempted that almost invariant type, the foul-mouthed N.C.O. I myself have
memories, happily remote, of Iago-like warrant ocers, sycophantic self-seekers,
the main dierence being that Iago has a surprisingly educated vocabulary. At
its core, however, is lth.
Te rst word of the play is Roderigos Tush, and Iagos reply begins with
an oath: Sblood. His rst word to Brabantio is Zounds (85), repeated at line
107. None of these expletives is to be found in the Folio text. Honigmann counts
fty cases where the profanities of Q are deleted or modied in F probably
because the latter, dependent on a manuscript written by the scribe Ralph Crane,
was produced after 1606, when the Act to Restrain the Abuses of the Players
forbade the use of oaths or the name of God.
2
Tush and pish may sound
like Rosalinds pretty oaths that are not dangerous (As You Like It, IV.i.189),
but their elimination along with others more shocking makes a considerable
dierence to the tone of the play, and especially to the characterisation of Iago.
Te profanities occur not only in soldierly contexts, where they could be taken
simply as appropriate to the language of the camp, but more signicantly in the
context of sexual disgust to which Iagos thoughts repeatedly refer themselves.
Te opening scene, as always with Shakespeare carefully excogitated, never
simple narrative exposition, is here worth particularly close attention. It does
provide some necessary exposition but also describes an evil soldierly prank:
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 299
you may think Roderigo must be half drunk to be seduced into the noisy
demonstration outside Brabantios houseas dangerous to him as it is useful to
Iago. Tere have been critics, led by Dr. Johnson, who have wished away the rst
act of the play, and indeed Boito eliminated it when writing the Otello libretto
for Verdi. But this move, however correct Johnson might think it and however
economical in terms of lyric theatre, would not be sucient compensation for
its cost.
Tis opening scene outside Brabantios house, with the subsequent interruption
of the wedding night of Othello and Desdemona, seems to me a version of
charivari. Charivari was an old custom: if you disapproved of a match as being
incongruous in some way, for instance if you deplored a disparity in age (or in
colour) between bride and bridegroom, you could call your neighbours and make
a disturbance outside their dwelling. Te practice was at one time reected in
the clamorous reaction to eclipses, also instances of order disrupted, as Othello
remembers in V.ii.99101, Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of sun
and moon, and that th arighted globe / Did yawn at alteration.
Iago will use the noise of the charivari, this rough music, to his own ends.
In the passage before they start making a row, while he and Roderigo are still
whispering in the street, we judge the violence of his emotion by his vocabulary:
if I dont hate Othello Abhor me . . . Despise me (1.i.6, 8), with a hint that,
since he knows his own foulness, these are indeed the proper responses to him.
Unlike Roderigo, he need not make himself known to Brabantio, and can use
what sexual insults he pleases: Even now, now, very now, an old black ram /
Is tupping your white ewe (8889) is Iagos way of informing the senator that
his daughter has eloped, and this voyeuristic and disgusted attitude to sex is
constant in him. Tey are at it at this very moment! Imagine it! And the man
is black, a devil: the senators daughter is being coverd with a Barbary horse
(111), is making the beast with two backs (116). Brabantio recognises the
speaker as a profane wretch (114), a villain (117), but Iago has disappeared
before the senator has made ready to hurry with Roderigo to the Sagittary, there
to continue the process of charivari and disturb the wedding night of Othello
and Desdemona.
Iagos onslaught on Brabantios susceptibilities is kept up by his pupil
Roderigo (the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor [126]); but he is required to
be somewhat civil, as Iago is not. One striking aspect of the scene is that there
are echoes of Hamlets habitual hendiadys. As George T. Wright demonstrated,
Othello comes second only to Hamlet in the frequency of its use of hendiadys,
though it oers less than half as many instances;
3
Shakespeares enthusiasm
for the device was waning, as one can see as Othello proceeds. But the habit of
expansive doubling continues at the outset of this new one: as loving his own
pride and purposes, trimmd in forms and visages of duty, Te native act and
gure of my heart, by night and negligence, your pleasure and most wise
Othello 300
consent, play and trie with your reverence, an extravagant and wheeling
stranger / Of here and every where, ag and sign of love, the property of
youth and maidhoodall these occur in the rst 170 lines. Othellos opening
speech in the next scene carries it on: my life and being, my unhoused free
condition / Put into circumscription and conne (I.ii.21, 2627). Brabantio
continues the habit in his protest to the Duke:
my particular grief
Is of so ood-gate and oerbearing nature
Tat it engluts and swallows other sorrows . . .
(I.iii.5557)
And:
I therefore apprehend and do attach thee.
For an abuser of the world, a practicer
Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.
(I.ii.7779)
Tere is another trace of the device in the senators war council (Neglecting an
attempt of ease and gain / To wake and wage a danger protless [I.iii.2930]).
Later instances are Brabantios a judgment maind and most imperfect (99),
thin habits and poor likelihoods (108), indirect and forced courses (111).
Te Duke calls the proposed expedition stubborn and boistrous (228) and
Othello refers, in Hamletian vein, to the inty and steel couch of war (230),
asking for Desdemona such accommodation and besort / As levels with her
breeding (23839); and, in a very strained expression, referring to his sight
as My speculative and ocd instruments (270). Desdemona, addressing the
Senate, catches the habit in her speech proclaiming her part in the wooing:
Tat I did love the Moor to live with him, / My downright violence, and storm
of fortunes, / May trumpet to the world (I.iii.24850). Here her own sense
that the unconventionality of her choice amounts to a kind of social violence
is emphasised by hendiadys (My downright violence, and storm). Later we
have quality and respect, honesty and trust (I.iii.282, 284), worldy matter
and direction (299), and so on. Te habit has spread to almost every character,
but examples become harder to nd as the play discovers and develops its own
dialect, becomes less fond of semantic collision and contraction.
Hamlet can be coarsely bawdy, and seems to mean to oend Ophelia by
being so, but although in future plays Shakespeare was to be capable of rendering
deep sexual disgust (for example in Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, and Te
Winters Tale, and in one or two sonnets) Iago is probably his most disgusted
and disgusting character, claiming precedence over Tersites and Apemantus by
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 301
virtue of his centrality to an action of which he is indeed the sole agent. Mention
of Desdemona having sex is all that is needed to make him talk dirty: Othello
hath boarded a land carract (I.ii.50) means that he has gone aboard her, almost
as an act of piracy or rape, as if any other explanation of the relationship were
out of the question. Te scene ends with a prose discussion between Iago and
Roderigo, and here Iago oers the young man he means to push deeper into
corruption an account of his beliefs and habits. Although it may suggest a similar
self-hatred, this confession in no way resembles the Credo written by Boito for
Verdi, which makes of Iago a gloomy nineteenth-century atheist. Yet it does
oer a kind of philosophy.
Roderigo is in love with Desdemona, and Iago cannot think of love as
anything but lust: the beloved object is a guinea hen, a loose or worthless woman;
the lover is behaving like a baboon. Roderigo claims that it is not in his virtue
or nature to stop being fond, whereupon Iago delivers an extraordinary speech
comparing the body to a garden, considered as a piece of coarse nature that the
gardener, or human will, can amend. Te uency and power of this speech are
remarkablethe persuasiveness of the analogy and the conceptual clarity of the
conclusion drawn:
If the beam of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of
sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to
most prepostrous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging
motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts . . .
(I.iii.326.)
Iagos opening exclamation (Virtue? a g! tis in ourselves that we are thus or
thus [319]) ensures that the speech begins with the equivalent of an obscene
gesture, but the argument that the will should have power and corrigible
authority is perfectly conventional. Tis is good doctrine, the reason controlling
the senses, the lower powers of the soul. Roderigos admission that he cannot
wield such control, his will being presumably unequal to the task, is met with
another piece of advice: love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of
the will (33435), which means that love is possible only because the will has
abdicated its power over the senses. Iagos deception of Roderigo depends on
the young mans willingness to believe that Desdemona is sexually corruptible,
that he can buy her with presents, taking comfort meanwhile from the thought
that the violent beginning of Desdemonas love for Othello will surely be
followed by a movement of revulsion, as Iagos philosophy of lust would lead
him to expect. And for good measure Othello will surely, in his turn, grow sick
of Desdemona. Te food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be
to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida (34749). Te locust was a very
sweet fruit, the food of John the Baptist in the wilderness; coloquintida was
Othello 302
bitter and used as a purge. Iago can look about quite widely for his similes. Te
union of the lovers is a match between an erring barbarian and a super-subtle
Venetian (35556), a black man and a well-born Venetian lady; they had, at
least among the vulgar, reputations, the black man for superior sexual powers,
the Venetian lady for love aairs.
Te aptness of this talk, and its lexical resourcefulness, display a mind, almost
the mind of a poet, made formidable and alien by the context of corruption, a
mind capable of seeming honest when honesty is called for but soured with its
own baseness. Iagos baseness is more fundamental than a mere desire for revenge
against Cassio and Othello; it is darker than Edmunds in King Lear. Te whole
point of the dialogue between Desdemona and Iago on the wharf at Cyprus
(II.i) is to demonstrate that Iago, though apparently willing to pass the time of
day with women, cannot quite manage to keep suppressed his loathing of them;
he hates them for being sexed. Tat Cassio delights in touching them, smiling,
taking their hands, and so forth makes him a man whom Iago hates less for his
lieutenancy than for his sexual freedom, his ease with women:
4
a most profane
and liberal counsellor, he calls him (16364); and although there is here a tinge
of puritanical contempt for the libertine, Iagos next exchange with Roderigo,
which follows hard upon the rapture greeting Othellos safe arrival, again dwells
on the image of Desdemona engaged in the act of sport (227). He knows
that she is to be credited with a delicate tenderness (232), but he uses that
knowledge only to persuade Roderigo that she will come to disrelish and abhor
the Moorvery nature will instruct her to do so (23334). Her irting with
Cassio is lechery, and after it copulation must inevitably follow: hard at hand
comes the master and main exercise, th incorporate conclusion. Pish! (26163
[F]). (Othello, infected by Iagos corruption, echoes this Pish! in IV.i.42.)
In the course of the play this kind of talk is contrasted with the innocently
excessive courtesies of Cassio, the secret rebelliousness of Emilia, and of
course the honesty of Othello himself, before his fall. Cassios language is so
near the extreme of doting admiration that Iago can profess to believe that
his civil and humane seeming is only a cover for his salt and most hidden
loose aection (II.i.23941). Of course his immediate intention is to gull
Roderigo; the art of the play is to make his claim seem not quite implausible.
Cassios extravagances, however disinterested, may sometimes go over the top,
as when he expresses his hopes that Othello will arrive safely in Cyprus, and
Make loves quick pants in Desdemonas arms (II.i.80); here he uses a trope
from erotic poetry, to be found also in Tomas Carews poem A Rapture:
Yet my tall pine shall in the Cyprian strait / Ride safe at anchor, and unlade
her freight. Cassio has a touch of the libertine, and his relationship with
Bianca is important to the plot, but he is incapable of the language of Iago;
he combines a politely seductive way of talking
5
with a matter-of-fact attitude
to sexual satisfaction, a not unusual combination.
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 303
A dialogue in Act II is carefully inserted to make plain this capital
dierence between Iago and Cassio. Iago says Othello has left early to be with
Desdemona: He hath not yet made wanton the night with her; and she is
sport for Jove.
Cas. Shes a most exquisite lady.
Iago. And Ill warrant her, full of game.
Cas. Indeed shes a most fresh and delicate creature.
Iago. What an eye she has! Methinks it sounds a parley to provocation.
Cas. An inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest.
Iago. And when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love?
Cas. She is indeed perfection.
Iago. Wellhappiness to their sheets!
(iii.18.)
Tis keenly written passage (some of which F tries to render as verse) contrives
a social encounter that can only make Cassio uneasy; his position is such that
despite his being the superior ocer he cannot reprove Iago, only withhold
assent to his slyly voyeuristic propositions and provide more courtly alternatives.
When Iago invites him to drink to the health of black Othello (32), he tries
to decline the invitation, such toasts being a courtesy he disapproves of because,
as he explains, he has a weak head for drink. Tis is candid, but Iago seems to
have known about this weakness already. Cassio makes a mistake when, having
himself been addressed as lieutenant (13), he replies with good Iago (33), a
patronising form of address like honest, a word which from now on becomes
central to the play. Iago resents it, for it is a word normally used of inferiors, but
he makes use of it, since a reputation for good-humoured servile reliability suits
his ends.
6
Cassio indeed loses this match, since it is as if he were explaining or
defending his more delicate sexual attitudes by deriving them from his higher
rank and class, a certain coarseness in these matters being exactly what one would
expect of a social inferior.
Iago naturally has no use for the language of courtship; all love-making for
him is merely the submission of the will to the base passions of the body. He
assumes that Othello is a lusty Moor (II.i.295), perhaps because he is black,
and the ideas of blackness and sexual potency were already twinned, or perhaps
because he just assumes that all men are lusty. Othello himself has explained
to the Duke that he wants Desdemona to come to Cyprus with him, Nor to
comply with heat (the young aects / In me defunct) and proper satisfaction; /
But to be free and bounteous to her mind (I.iii.26466). (Here aects means
passions, defunct means not dead but spent, a matter of the past, and
proper means personal or even, in this context, selsh.
7
) Othello is to him a
gross and grossly privileged body, so decient in the cunning of intellect that he
Othello 304
is easily duped. Iago doesnt seem to be particularly lustful himself; he may take
that to be a source of strength, while still envying others who are.
All this we infer only from the language of the individual characters. As it
happens, Iagos is least interesting when he is thinking in verse; his soliloquy
at the end of II.i is unconvincing, almost an admission of confusion in the
author as well as the character, a muddle of implausible motives where none
was needed other than the established foulness of the mans imagination.
8
Even when Othello asks him to explain the reason for the brawl (II.iii.176.)
he speaks of the peaceful merriment that preceded it as being in terms like
bride and groom / Devesting them for bed. His obsession gets uninhibited
play when he later tells Othello what he experienced when sharing a bed with
Cassio (III.iii.41326)
9
and again expresses his obsessive interest in what
people do in bed (kiss me hard . . . laid his leg / Over my thigh). When
Boito rewrote this for Verdi (Era la notte, Cassio dormia), he had to leave this
kind of thing out, as too strong for a polite late-nineteenth-century audience;
Verdi supplied the feeling with eery music, giving the speech the air of an
erotic dream.
10
Te pivotal scene of the play is III.iii, which from the outset, with Iagos
I like not that as Cassio withdraws, to the end, when Othello has accepted
the charge against Desdemona and planned her death and Cassios, is fewer
than ve hundred lines long, probably less than half an hour of stage time.
It is extraordinarily bold. Desdemona aids the process, twice commending
Iagos honesty, a conviction of which in the other characters is now essential
to his design; at her exit Othello speaks of his love for her and the chaos that
will follow if his love should ever cease. It is at exactly this point (93) that
Iago goes to work, sowing doubts about Cassio. Te dialogue is spare, at rst
sounding almost like casual chat between a superior, who calls his interlocutor
thou, and a subordinate, who must use you but who, without ceasing to be
deferential, can count on his bosss trust and on a long acquaintance:
Iago. My noble lord
Oth. What dost thou say, Iago?
Iago. Did Michael Cassio, when you wood my lady,
Know of your love?
Oth. He did, from rst to last. Why dost thou ask?
Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought,
No further harm.
Oth. Why of thy thought, Iago?
Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.
Oth. O yes, and went between us very oft.
Iago. Indeed!
Oth. Indeed? ay, indeed. Discernst thou aught in that?
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 305
Is he not honest?
Iago. Honest, my lord?
Oth. Honest? ay, honest.
Iago. My lord, for aught I know.
Oth. What dost thou think?
Iago. Tink, my lord?
Oth. Tink, my lord? By heaven, thou echost me,
As if there were some monster in thy thought
Too hideous to be shown . . .
. . .
If thou dost love me,
Show me thy thought.
(93116)
In the rst exchange the pentameters are broken up, giving the passage a
peculiar uneasiness, which is reinforced by the triple honest and the triple
think, especially where two usages collide. What didst not like? asks Othello,
seventy-ve lines after Iago planted the expression. Te question whether
Cassio is or merely seems honest (unlike Iago, whom Othello accepts as honest
all through) is now adroitly raised. I dare be sworn I think that he is honest. I
think so too . . . Why then I think Cassios an honest man:
Nay, yet theres more in this.
I prithee speak to me as to thy thinkings,
As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
Te worst of words.
(13033)
At which point Iago expresses moral indignation, again with sound doctrine,
explaining that even a slave can keep his thoughts to himself, and that one
may have uncleanly apprehensions (139) without revealing them. But Othello
insists that if Iago thinks him wronged he should make known his thoughts
(14344); By heaven, Ill know thy thoughts (162).
Here we are only at the beginning of a storm; no high colours, no blasts of
rhetoric; the words honest and think, thinking, thoughts have to do all the
work. After a while Iago, who has spoken of his own jealousy (147), meaning
something like envy or undue curiosity, but without sexual implication, uses
the word again, now with full sexual reference and direct application to Othellos
case: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyd monster which doth
mock / Te meat it feeds on (16567). Te seventy or so lines of verse that
have elapsed before there is any direct accusation of Cassio and Desdemona
have brought Othello to misery (171). He soon asserts that he could never
Othello 306
suer cuckoldry, adding that Desdemonas indelity, if it existed, could not be
attributed to any weakness in himself: For she had eyes, and chose me (189).
And now the insistence is on eyes: Ill see before I doubt (190) . . . Look to your
wife, observe her well with Cassio, / Wear your eyes thus, not jealious nor secure
(19798) (not suspicious but not overcondent); In Venice they do let God see
the pranks / Tey dare not show their husbands (2023) . . . She that so young
could give out such a seeming / To seel her fathers eyes up (20910) . . . If more
thou dost perceive, let me know more; / Set on thy wife to observe (23940). Tis
string of words will culminate in Othellos demand for the ocular proof . . . Make
me to see t (36064). A passage of high tension, generated by all the words that
have been in play: honest, think, see:
Oth. I do not think but Desdemonas honest.
Iago. Long live she so! and long live you to think so!
(22526)
Iago then touches on the disparity or disproportion between Othello and
his Venetian wife, already become, through his assiduity, a credible cause of
concern:
Iago. To be direct and honest is not safe.
Oth. Nay, stay. Tou shouldst be honest.
Iago. I should be wisefor honestys a fool . . .
(37882)
I think my wife be honest, and think she is not;
I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.
Ill have some proof.
(38486)
I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion . . . You would be satised? . . . but how?
How satised, my lord? / Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on? / Behold
her toppd? (39196) (here he uses to Othello himself the word Roderigo had
used to Brabantio in the opening scene: the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor
[126] and Your daughter . . . hath made a gross revolt [13334], as well as top,
a variant of the word tupping in line 89).
It were a tedious diculty, I think,
To bring them to that prospect, damn them then,
If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster
More than their own. What then? How then?
What shall I say? Wheres satisfaction?
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 307
It is impossible you should see this,
Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys . . .
(397403)
Te only satisfaction available is Iagos account of his night with Cassio.
It becomes clear, in this masterly dialogue, that Iagos interest in sex is to
watch others doing it, or at least to think about them doing it. It was important
therefore to develop these ideas of seeing, these increasingly coarse descriptions
and conjectures. Te tone has grown calculatedly immodestdamn them
thenand this is achieved before the story about Cassio in bed, and before
the handkerchief provides what looks like satisfactory ocular evidence. For the
tactician Iago has correctly guessed Othellos reaction even to the possibility of
his wifes unfaithfulness, and at rst with all the hesitations proper to an honest
man (and an inferior) communicating such a suspicion, he infects Othello with
his own disgust. Following the uses of honest, think, and see, with their
derivatives, one begins to understand how compact and erce this writing is.
Even after the account of Cassios dream, when Othello is ready to tear his
wife to pieces, the honest man can admit yet we see nothing done; / She may
he honest yet (43233)which is the moment to introduce the handkerchief,
something which can be seen, something with which Iago can claim to have seen
Cassio wiping his beard. And the scene ends with the pair swearing a joint oath
of loyalty and vengeance.
Considering the scantiness, or absence, of incriminating evidence, and
the completeness of Othellos collapse, it would be easy to read this scene as
an allegory of demonic possession, a reading Othello himself for a moment
considers but dismisses in the last scene of the play: I look down towards his
feet; but thats a fable. / If that thou best a devil, I cannot kill thee (V.ii.286
87). Te success of Iago is diabolic only in the sense that his temptation has
discovered in Othello a horror of his tempters apparent knowingness about sex.
Once more the eect is got by reiteration: honest, think, etc. Te magical
force of this rhetoric is what makes the scene possible.
Soon the handkerchief, the false substitute for ocular proof, becomes itself
the means of equally terrible reiteration. Othello credits it with an occult power
that has now become appropriate to the occasion. Te Egyptian or gipsy who
gave it to his mother could almost read / Te thoughts of people (III.iv.5758).
It had the power of controlling his fathers love for his mother; if she lost it he
would loathe her. He is talking about his own love for Desdemona: theres magic
in the web of it (69).
Te ensuing dialogue with Desdemonashe lying about the handkerchief
and crazily resuming her plea for Cassio, while he says almost nothing but
handkerchief is as brilliantly conceived as the OthelloIago dialogue, and it
is hard to imagine a dramatic poetry more minimally perfect:
Othello 308
Oth. Ist lost? Ist gone? Speak, ist out o th way?
Des. Heaven bless us!
Oth. Say you?
Des. It is not lost; but what and if it were?
Oth. How?
Des. I say, it is not lost.
Oth. Fetcht, let me seet.
Des. Why, so I can, sir, but I will not now.
Tis is a trick to put me from my suit.
Pray you let Cassio be receivd again.
Oth. Fetch me the handkerchief, my mind misgives.
Des. Come, come;
Youll never meet a more sucient man.
Oth. Te handkerchief!
Des. I pray talk me of Cassio.
Oth. Te handkerchief!
Des. A man that all his time
Has founded his good fortunes on your love,
Shard dangers with you
Oth. Te handkerchief!
Des. I faith, you are to blame.
Oth. Zounds!
11
(III.iv.7998)
It has often been remarked, by G. B. Shaw with derogatory intent, that
Othello is the most operatic of Shakespeares tragedies; think, for example, of
the duet at the end of III.iii (where Verdi has the advantage of Shakespeare
that he can make Iago and Otello swear their oath together instead of having
to do it one at a time). Tis intense Shakespearian scene, too, is in its way
equally musical. Tis kind of writing, by quasi-musical, quasi-magical means,
achieves a rawness of passion, a conict between innocently suicidal enquiry and
a rage almost beyond words. Rage beyond words was not something the early
Shakespeare would have even thought of aiming at. Here, as in Hamlet, a long
experience of theatre has taught him a new way of writing poetry.
Te strangest line in Desdemonas part comes in IV.iii. Othello has just
grossly insulted and struck her in the presence of Lodovico, the Venetian envoy.
Now he orders her to bed. Talking with Emilia, she remembers the maid Barbary
and her song, but before she sings it she says, with apparent inconsequence,
Tis Lodovico is a proper man (35). None of this passage (3052) is included
in Q. Tere must have been some good reason to exclude the Willow Song
(perhaps the temporary unavailability of a boy actor who could sing), and the line
about Lodovico was lost along with the song. Some modern editors, including
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 309
Honigmann, give the line to Emilia, but only because it seems out of character
for Desdemona.
12
Despite his treatment of her, she has continued submissive
and loving to Othello, even when he acted out his horrible pretence that she
was a whore and Emilia her bawd. After Othellos aria Had it pleasd heaven
/ To try me with aiction . . . (IV.ii.47.) she hardly complains: I hope my
noble lord esteems me honest, and Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
(65, 70). Even at her boldest, as when she insists on going to Cyprus, she has
deserved Lodovicos compliment, Truly, an obedient lady (IV.i.248). Yet now,
at a moment of intense marital distress, her thoughts wander momentarily
to another man. Very shortly she listens with amazement to Emilias avowal
that she would be unfaithful to her husband if the reward was great enough.
Desdemona says she would not behave so For the whole world (IV.iii.79). Te
ne speech (not in Q) in which Emilia stands up for womens right to sensual
life against the restrictions imposed by tyrannical men is not the sort of thing
Desdemona would ever have spoken (IV.iii.84103). Yet she is rather taken by
Lodovico, and at a very odd moment.
It is true that she can say unexpected things; she is represented as suering
a kind of loss of attention: after the horrible brothel scene when cast as that
cunning whore of Venice / Tat married with Othello (IV.ii.8990), she declares
herself half asleep (97) and hardly understands what Emilia says next. Tese
moments may contribute to any secret disposition in an audience to agree that it
was less than seemly of this young woman, ignoring the curled darlings of her
nation, to marry a man so alien and so much older, an extravagant and wheeling
stranger (I.i.136), a general whose social standing, though high, depends entirely
upon his military rank in an embattled state. (As Auden remarks, Brabantio was
happy enough to have Othello to supper and hear his tales, but that was another
matter from having him as a son-in-law.
13
) And she is made to lie
14
about the
handkerchief, and about the identity of her murderer. Many of these traits may
be attributed to a strain of feminism in the play, a hint of the ways in which
women might sometimes escape the regime imposed by their husbandsa little
quiet talk with another woman, a venial b or two. Yet the fact remains that
there is a faint ambiguity in her character as we try to see it as a whole, and this
is notoriously true also of Othellos.
Tere have been some celebrated criticisms of Othellos generally orotund
way of speaking, which may be regarded as a sort of innocent pompousness or,
if you dislike it, a self-regard that is not so innocent. It is easy enough to explain
the choice for Othello of this particular mode of speech. He is meant to be a
man whose sole reason for existence is commandafter all, he is responsible for
the security of an empire, Cyprus being a province that must be defended. Te
self-esteem of such a man can be rendered in the naturally hyperbolical terms
of military glory. It has been observed that Londoners of the time were familiar
with the idea of magnicent North African potentates. Te black, or tawny,
Othello 310
soldier-hero was a gure in festivals long before he reached the Elizabethan stage
. . . Tese Moorish shows were resplendent, soldierly and sensual . . . the role of
the Moor in public spectacle was to enrich the public conception of power and
sexual potency in the early stages of Tudor empire.
15
Te example of Marlowes Tamburlaine was fairly recent, but Othello does
not have his out-and-out bombast, and there is a touch of modesty and courtesy
in his speech. His rst line, Tis better as it is (I.ii.6), is intended to promote
calm in the face of Iagos pretended anger on his behalf; he has nothing to fear
from Brabantio, he says, because of his services to the state. Here he claims
royal birth, like a sultan in a Lord Mayors Show; he will not boast of it except
by mentioning it, but the nal eect is not quite modest. When he speaks of
his demerits, the word (as in Coriolanus, I.i.275) means merits. It is an odd
word since it can also mean its opposite; but I think the point of it is to have
Othello use a strange word rather than a familiar onesomething he does on a
good many other occasions. Its oddness makes it stand out against the bustling
language of the messages concerning the military crisis, and his character
is already pretty rmly established as calm, grandiloquent, unaware of his
vulnerability, by the famous line Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will
rust them (I.ii.59). Tis invulnerability is founded in a soldiers courage, and it
does not, as he supposes, extend to the dangers of civilian life.
Arriving in the Senate House, where all the talk is practical, he utters
an oration on the topic of his marriage (Most potent, grave, and reverend
signiors [I.iii.76.]) and on his wooing of Desdemona, Wherein I spoke of
most disastrous chances: / Of moving accidents by ood and eld, / Of hair-
breadth scapes i th imminent deadly breach, / Of being taken by the insolent
foe / And sold to slavery (13438)a speech of forty-one lines celebrated for
their grandeur, which is enhanced by the tinkling couplets and plain prose of
the following speeches by the Duke and Brabantio. Te speech is completely
successful; the Duke is proud that his warrior deputy talks exactly as he would
be expected to ght, superbly. And the grandeur depends partly on Othellos use
of unusual words like demerit and agnize and indign. Te one word he nds
no synonyms for is honest, twice applied to Iago in this scene (284, 294) and
repeatedly in later scenes. And it is the honest Iago who will, in the course of the
play, reduce Othellos language as well as his honour.
Before the temptation scene it is impossible to imagine Othello using the
vocabulary of Iago; indeed, he rarely uses language appropriate to prose. It is
essential to the character that until he collapses he speaks grandly. Later come
the anguished repetitions of handkerchief, the questioning of the sense in
which Iago uses the word lie, the pathetic stress on honesty, the unaccustomed
langue verte picked up from Iago, and the vile berating of Desdemona, whom he
calls a whore, which suits his action in striking her.
Othello in the Twenty-rst Century 311
Othellos nal speech has been much commented upon. In a famous essay
T. S. Eliot noted that in his self-pitying grandeur, his boasting about his weapon
and his past achievements, he stresses his claim to be serving the state but makes
no mention whatever of Desdemona. Humility is the most dicult of all virtues
to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself . . . I do not
believe that any writer has exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things
as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.
16
Tis view has been much
attacked, but it has not lost all its force. Eliot does not support his observation by
comment on the language of the speech, which has some resemblance to that of
Othellos speech to the Senate at the outset. It repeats the point made in I.ii.18
about the respect he has won by My services which I have done the signiory,
but important dierences arise from the fact that he cannot now allow himself to
speak of My parts, my title, and my perfect soul (I.ii.31). Instead, he compares
himself to Judas (the base Indian) who threw a pearl away / Richer than all his
tribe (V.ii.34748).
17
He claims not to be jealous except when wrought. He
cannot confess to weeping without explaining that it isnt his usual practice. And
he ends with a recollection of one more notable service to the state.
We need not suppose that Shakespeare was contemptuous; only that, as his
language suggests, Othello was human, the victim of long habit, and wanting, as
he ended his life, to enter a plea for merciful interpretation. Tat he did not get
it in the play, and has not always had it subsequently, merely shows how variable
interpretation must be when it has to work on language as complex as that of
Othello.
NOTES
1. Othello, ed. E. A. J. Honigmann (Arden edition, 1997). The date is discussed
in Appendix I, pp. 34450, the text in Appendix 2, pp. 35167, which summarises
the arguments in Honigmanns book on the subject, The Texts of Othello (1996).
2. On the cleaning up of F. see Honigmann. p. 352.
3. Hendiadys and Hamlet, PMLA 96, pp. 168ff.
4. W. H. Auden thought otherwise, arguing that Cassio is easy only with
women of his own class. The Joker in the Pack, in The Dyers Hand (1963),
p. 262.
5. Auden speaks of Cassios socialized eroticism, p. 262.
6. See Empsons essay Honest in Othello, in The Structure of Complex Words,
pp. 21849. The preceding chapters, Honest Man and Honest Numbers
(pp. 185217), are also relevant.
7. See the discussion of defunct in Hulme, Explorations in Shakespeares Lan-
guage, pp. 15354. I think the best of her suggestions is that it means past danger.
The sense of proper seems to be misunderstood by Honigmann (in conformity
with rule).
8. Auden, who describes Iago as a practical joker, goes so far as to say that
he ought to act brilliantly when being all the varieties of himself as presented to
Othello, Cassio, Desdemona, etc., but badly in the soliloquies: He must deliver
Othello 312
the lines of his soliloquies in such a way that he makes nonsense of them (The
Joker in the Pack, p. 258).
9. On the importance in the play of the word bed, which occurs more than
twenty times, see R. R. Heilman, Magic in the Web (1956).
10. Otello is not only the finest of Shakespearian operas but in certain respects
offers an intelligent commentary on its source. It has been remarked that Boito
underlined certain passages in the play, for example Iagos description of love as
merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will, but Verdi did not set
them; I take these to indicate that Boito saw the importance of the lines but, feel-
ing he could not use them, indicated that the music must somehow convey their
sense. See James A. Hepokoski, Otello (1987), for a study of Boitos dealings with
Shakespeare.
11. F weakens this exit by substituting Away for Zounds.
12. This is the reason why some editors transfer Mirandas excoriation of
Caliban (The Tempest, I.ii.35162) to Prospero. But the motive is not a good one,
for it assumes that editors already know all they need to about the limits of the
character.
13. The Joker in the Pack, p. 263. Auden remarks that in a mercantile and
warlike society like Venice there was need of foreign soldiers and also of usurers,
the latter being Jews and socially unacceptable despite their utility. No Venetian
would dream of spitting on Othello as on Shylock, but a line was drawn neverthe-
less, and it excluded marriage to a high-born Venetian woman.
14. Lie is another reiterated word; lie/lies occurs twenty-five times in the
play. It provides the theme of Desdemonas talk with the Clown (III.iv), a scene
which prepares us for Iagos casual and obscene punning in the horrible IV.i:
LieWith her? / With her? On her; what you will . . . / Lie with her? lie on her?
We say lie on her, when they belie her (3437)at which point Othello has his
fit. This device of hammering away at certain words is, as we have seen, a habit of
the mature Shakespeare.
15. Philip Brockbank, The Theatre of Othello, in On Shakespeare (1989),
p. 200. Brockbanks information comes from The Calendar of Dramatic Records in
the Books of the Livery Companies of London, 14851640, eds. D. J. Gordon and Jean
Robertson (1954).
16. Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, in Selected Essays (1932),
pp. 13132.
17. Judean is the reading of F; Q (and F2) read Indian. The arguments for
and against are summarised by Honigmann in the Arden edition, p. 342.
313
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Twentieth Century
A. C. Bradley, Othello, from Shakespearean Tragedy (London: Macmillan,
1904).
T. S. Eliot, The Hero Cheering Himself Up (1927), from Shakespeare and
the Stoicism of Seneca, reprinted in Selected Essays 19171932 (London:
Faber and Faber, 1932).
G. Wilson Knight, The Othello Music, from The Wheel of Fire (London:
Methuen, 1930), pp. 97119.
William Empson, The Best Policy, from Life and Letters To-Day 14, no. 4
(summer 1936), pp. 3945.
Harold C. Goddard, Othello, from The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 2 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 69106. 1951 by the University
of Chicago.
Kenneth Burke, Othello: An Essay to Illustrate a Method, from The Hudson
Review 4, no. 2 (summer 1951), pp. 165200. Reprinted by permission of
The Hudson Review.
Robert B. Heilman, Othello: The Unheroic Tragic Hero, from Magic in the
Web: Action and Language in Othello (Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press, 1956), pp. 137168. University of Kentucky Press.
W. H. Auden, The Joker in the Pack, from Encounter (August 1961). Reprinted
in The Dyers Hand and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1962),
pp. 246272.
A. D. Nuttall, Othello, from A New Mimesis: Shakespeare and the Representation
of Reality (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 120143. 1983 A. D. Nutall.
Harold Bloom, Introduction, from Iago (New York, 1992), pp. 15.
Twenty-rst Century
Frank Kermode, Othello, from Shakespeares Language (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2000), pp. 165182. 2000 by Frank Kermode.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
317
Action, Rymer on improbabilities of,
5152, 5657
Adams, John Quincy, 99, 117126
Aemilia. See Emilia
Agent-act ratio, 234243
Aldridge, Ira, 97
Alienation
Auden on, 270278
Nuttall on, 284, 288
Analogies, between Iago and Turk,
197200
Arden, Mary, 1
Aristotle, 84
Artistry, Iago and, 152
Artists, 9899
Auden, W. H., 137, 261280
Barbarity, 84
Beauty, Knight on, 157175
Betrayal, murder and, 36
Betterton, Tomas, 83, 85
Bianca, character of, 41
Birth of William Shakespeare, 1
Bloom, Harold, 137, 292296
Boito, Arrigo, 99
Brabantio
Adams on, 118121
arrest of Othello and, 67
character of, 41
Coleridge on, 114115
control of by Iago, 2425
Goddard on, 188, 191
Kermode on, 299300
Rymer on, 5253
Bradley, A. C.
on evil nature of Iago, 137, 139
141, 153156
on friends and acquaintances
impressions of Iago, 142144
on inner character of Iago, 144147
on motivation of Iago, 147153
Branagh, Kenneth, 138
Burbage, James, 2
Burbage, Richard, 45
Burke, Kenneth, 138, 224251
on action and individual nature,
234243
on cathartic functions of Iago,
224228
on handkerchief, 247, 248251
on ideal paradigm, 228234
on peripety, 243249
Cassio
Adams on, 124
Auden on, 272273
character of, 41
Coleridge on, 116117
disgrace of, 1112, 31
dishonesty of Iago and, 142143
Empson on, 180, 185
as gentleman, 9
reasons for Iagos hatred of, 148
149, 154
INDEX
Index 318
Rymer on, 57
Schlegel on, 101
as warrior, 196
Catharsis, 224228, 249250
Characterization
Adams on, 121122, 124125
Bradley on, 137, 139147
Burke on, 138
Empson on, 138
Goddard on, 191
Grith on, 95
Hazlitt on, 98
Johnson on, 9394
Rymer on, 4951, 5758, 6970
Shaw on, 134136
Teobald on, 90
Charivari, 299
Charles II (King of France), 46
Cinthio, Giraldi, 45, 127
Clown, 42, 182183
Coldness, Bradley on, 144, 145146,
148
Cold War, 195
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 83, 9798,
113117, 140, 149
Colin, Alexandre-Marie, 99
Comedy, Iago and, 9
Complexity of Iago, 153154
Composite Personality, Goddard on,
195196
Condell, Henry, 3
Confession, Heilman on, 254256
Consistency, Rymer on lack of, 6465
Contempt, Auden on, 268269
Contrasts
Goddard on, 190191, 211215
Hazlitt on, 103104
Knight on, 158160, 164165,
176177
Nuttall on, 283
Conventionality, lack of, 84
Courtiers, Cassio as, 9
Creed of Iago, Bradley on, 145
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky),
213
Criminals, Auden on, 262263
Cultural evolution, 290291
Cynicism, Knight on, 171173
Danger, Iago and, 150151
Davis, Andrew, 297
Death of William Shakespeare, 3
Deception
Auden on, 268
Desdemona and, 910
Iago and, 2930, 140141
Delacroix, 99
Desdemona
Adams on, 99, 118121, 123124
Auden on, 278
Burke on, 226
changing of ending and, 84
character of, 910, 41
Emilia on faithfulness of, 17
Gildon on, 7879
Goddard on, 186187, 188191,
200204, 211215
Goddard on death of, 216222
Grith on, 95
Hazlitt on, 107108, 111
Johnson on, 93
Knight on, 167168, 171, 174175
love of, 7, 8
murder of, 19
obedience and, 8
relationship of with Cassio, 13
Roderigos love for, 5, 23
Rymer on, 47, 57, 70
Rymer on improbabilities of, 5051
Schlegel on, 101
Swinburne on, 128
Vogel on, 138
Detachment, Knight on, 159160
Devils, Knight on, 175176
Dido, Gildon on, 7980
Divinity, Knight on, 175176
Index 319
Dogs, Empson on, 185
Domesticity, Knight on, 167169
Domestic tragedy, Nuttall on, 282283
Dreams, Goddard on, 187
Ducis, Jean-Francois, 84
Eavesdropping, Goddard on, 187
Editors, importance of, 8384
Eliot, T. S., 137, 156157
Emilia
character of, 41
on faithfulness of Desdemona, 17
handkerchief and, 14, 21
Hazlitt on, 106107
Iagos feelings toward, 146
lack of understanding of Iago by,
143
on lies of Iago, 38
Rymer on improbabilities of, 50
Schlegel on, 101
Emotions, Swinburne on, 98,
133134
Empson, William, 138, 179186
Endings, changing of, 84
Envy, Iago and, 146
Estrangement, Burke on, 138
Etheridge, George, 71
Evil
Bradley on, 139141, 153156
Empson on, 186
False interpretations, Bradley on,
139140
Farce, Rymer on, 5758, 75
First Folio, 3, 282
Fishburne, Laurence, 138
Freedom, 28, 188
Gay rights. See Homosexuality
Gentlemen, 9, 84
Gentleness, Knight on, 167168
Gildon, Charles, 46, 7581
Globe Teater, 2
Goddard, H. C., 137
on aspects of war in play,
196200
on death of Desdemona, 216222
on Desdemona, 200204
on Desdemona and Iago, 211215
Hamlet vs. Othello and, 186189
on Iago, 191194
on Iago as spirit of modern war,
195196
on misunderstandings, 210211
on Othello, 204210
on parent-child situation, 188189
on race, 189191
on war and peace, 222223
Goodness, Iagos hatred of in men,
146
Greenblatt, Stephen, 138
Greene, Robert, 1
Grith, Elizabeth, 84, 9495
Guilt, Othello and, 25
Gullibility, Nuttall on, 283284
Hamlet, comparison of Iago to, 137,
292296
Hamlet, comparison to, 186188,
297301
Handkerchief
Burke on, 247, 248251
Emilia and, 14, 21
Goddard on, 201204
Hughes on, 88
Iago and, 16
Kermode on, 307308
Knight on, 168
Rymer on, 66, 67, 7273, 74
Swinburne on, 127, 128129
Hathaway, Anne, 1
Hatred
Bloom on, 294
Goddard on, 195196
Iago and, 147149
Hazlitt, William, 98, 102112, 140
Index 320
Hecatommithi (Cinthio), 45, 127,
291292
Hecht, Anthony, 137
Heilman, Robert B., 137, 252261
Hemings, John, 3
Heroism, 260261, 280292
History of the Turks (Knolles), 45
Homosexuality
Bloom on, 294295
Leontes and, 275276
twentieth-century responses and,
138
Honesty
Bradley on, 142
Empson on, 138, 179186
Goddard on, 190191
Hopkins, Anthony, 138
Hostility, Iago and, 146
Hughes, John, 8689
Hughes, Margaret, 46
Hugo, Victor, 98, 126127
Humanity, 145146, 154
Humility, Heilman on, 259
Iachimo, 140
Iago
actors portraying, 284
analogy of to Turk, 197200
Auden on, 137, 261280
Bloom on, 137
Bloom on comparison of to Hamlet,
292296
Bradley on, 137
Bradley on evil and, 139141,
153156
Bradley on friends and
acquaintances impressions of,
142144
Bradley on inner character of,
144147
Bradley on motivation of, 147153
character of, 41
Coleridge on, 9798, 115116
control of Brabantio by, 2425
corruption of language by, 8
deceit of, 5, 6, 2930
deceit of Othello by, 1516
delight of in pain and suering,
24
disgrace of Cassio and, 1112
Emilia on lies of, 38
Gildon on, 81
Goddard on, 137, 187188, 190
194, 211215
hatred of Othello by, 23
Hazlitt on, 104, 109112
Heilman on, 137, 252261
Hughes on, 8788
Hugo on, 98, 126127
Johnson on, 93
as Katharma, 224228
Kermode on, 300308
Knight on, 171176, 178
lies of, 20
plot of, 31
reality and, 8, 28
reasons of for hatred of Cassio,
148149
Rymer on, 50, 62, 64
Schlegel on, 100101
self-understanding of, 2324
as spirit of modern war, 195196
Swinburne on, 127130
transformation of Othello and,
3133
Ideal paradigm, Burke on, 228234
Identity, 261280. See also Self-
understanding
Ignorance, Coleridge on, 117
Improbabilities
Gildon on, 7581
Goddard on, 210211
Rymer on, 4951
Impropriety, Voltaire on, 9092
Indelity, murder and, 36
Inner self, Goddard on, 191
Index 321
Intelligence
evil and, 153156
Goddard on, 193194, 195196
James I (King of England), 45
Jealousy
Auden on, 264265, 275276
Gildon on, 81
Grith on, 94
Hughes on, 8788
Kermode on, 305306
Rymer on, 48, 68
Schlegel on, 100
Shaw on, 134135
Swinburne on, 130
Teobald on, 90
Johnson, Samuel, 84, 9394, 97
Jokes, 205209, 267270
Jones, James Earl, 138
Jonson, Ben, 3
Justication
Bradley on, 147153
Burke on, 234243
Hazlitt on, 109110
Rymer on improbabilities of, 51,
5455
Shaw on, 134135
Katharma, Iago as, 224228
Kean, Edmund, 97, 99
Kermode, Frank, 297311
Kimble, Charles, 99
Kings Men, 2
Knight, G. W., 137, 157178
Knolles, Richard, 45
Knowledge, Auden on, 279280
Lamb, Charles, 83, 98, 102
Language
Adams on, 122
Coleridge on, 114115
Desdemona and, 14
Empson on, 138, 179186
Iago and, 2425
Kermode on, 302304, 308311
Knight on, 137, 157175
Nuttall on, 286288
of Othello, 38, 40
Othello and, 26
power of, 8
Rymer on, 4849, 5354, 5960, 65
Leavis, F. R., 137
Leontes, 275276
Lies
Desdemona and, 20, 203204
of Iago, 20
Linnen, Rymer on, 46, 48
Lodovico, 34, 42
Loneliness, Burke on, 251
Lord Chamberlains Men, 12. See also
Kings Men
Love
Desdemona, Othello and, 7
Desdemona and, 8
Gildon on, 79
Kermode on, 301302
Othello and, 6
Machiavelli, 140
MacDonald, Ann-Marie, 138
Magic, Burke on, 249
Malignity, motiveless, 140, 149
Malone, Edmund, 84
Marriage, of Shakespeare, 1
Melodrama, Shaw on, 98
Mephistopheles (Goethe), comparison
of Iago to, 139, 174, 175
Military. See Wars
Misunderstandings, Goddard on,
210211
Montano, 42, 57
Moors, 47, 7576
Morality
Adams on, 118
Coleridge on, 97
Eliot on, 157
Index 322
Goddard on, 137
Grith on, 84, 9495
Lamb on, 98
Moral pyromaniac, Iago as, 137,
193194
Motivation
Bradley on, 147153
Burke on, 234243
Hazlitt on, 109110
Rymer on improbabilities of, 51,
5455
Shaw on, 134135
Motiveless malignity, 140, 149
Mousetraps, Goddard on, 187
Murder
of Desdemona, 19
Heilman on, 254256
indelity and, 36
of Roderigo, 18
Swinburne on, 133
Music, 99
Nationality, Iago and, 140
Nature, marriage as against, 1011,
2728
Nelson, Tim Blake, 297
New Historicism, 138
Nobility
Knight on, 164, 167, 177178
Nuttall on, 280292
of Othello, 137
Rymer on, 49
Nuttall, A. D., 138, 280292
Obedience, Desdemona and, 8
Olivier, Laurence, 97, 138
Opera, 99
Othello
actors portraying, 83, 85, 97, 99, 138
character of, 41
deceit of by Iago, 1516
Eliot on, 137, 156157
nal speech of, 3840
Gildon on, 76
Goddard on, 189191, 204210
hatred of by Iago, 23
Hazlitt on, 104, 106107
Hecht on, 137
Heilman on, 257261
Hughes on, 88
Hugo on, 98, 126127
Johnson on, 93
Knight on, 176177
language of, 38, 40
love of, 7
murder of Desdemona by, 19
nobility of, 137
Nuttall on, 284290
Rymer on improbabilities of, 4950
self-understanding of, 35
strength of, 2526, 27
Teobald on, 90
transformation of, 3133
Pagans, Adams on, 121
Paintings, 99
Paradigms, Burke on, 228234
Paradise Lost (Milton), 139
Parent-child situation, Goddard on,
188189
Passion
Adams on, 118121, 124
Coleridge on, 114
Hazlitt on, 104105, 109, 112
Heilman on, 256257
Hughes on, 87
Iago and, 148
Knight on, 163
Shaw on, 135
Swinburne on, 130
Pepys, Samuel, 4647
Peripety, Burke on, 243249
Petrarchan ideal, 3
Pharmakos, 225
Index 323
Pleading, Rymer on, 5354
Plotting
Burke on, 243249
of Iago, 31
Johnson on, 94
Rymer on, 7273, 7475
Rymer on improbabilities of, 6364
Poetics (Aristotle), 84
Poetry, 2, 3
Pope, Alexander, 75, 83, 89, 91
Portraiture, 241
Possession, Burke on, 138, 247248
Power, 109, 150151
Practical Joke (Dostoevsky), 205209
Practical jokes, Auden on, 267270
Pride, Iago and, 146
Profanity, 46, 298
Prot, Empson on, 183
Promiscuity, Vogel on, 138
Psychology, Goddard on, 191194
Puritanism, 2, 46
Purity, Schlegel on, 101
Pyromaniac, moral, 137, 193194
Race
Adams on, 99, 118126
Auden on, 273
Coleridge on, 114
Gildon on, 7677
Goddard on, 189191
Lamb on, 102
nineteenth-century critics and,
9798
Roderigo and, 56
Schlegel on, 97, 100101
Taylor on, 97
twentieth-century responses and,
138
twenty-rst-century interpretations
and, 297
Realism, Swinburne on, 131133
Reality, Iago and, 8
Religion, Gildon on, 76
Remorse, Hazlitt on, 106
Restoration period, 46, 180182
Revenge
Auden on, 264266
Goddard on, 187, 194
Hazlitt on, 104105
Teobald on, 90
Robeson, Paul, 138
Roderigo
Auden on, 265266
character of, 41
love for of Desdemona, 5, 23
murder of, 18
Rymer on, 71
Rymer on improbabilities of, 5051
Swinburne on, 131
Rymer, Tomas, 46, 4775
Sacrice, 101, 254256
Sanity, evil and, 153
Satan (Milton), comparison of Iago to,
139
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 97, 99101
Schrder, Friedrich Ludwig, 84
Scientic enquiry, 279280
Self-control, of Iago, 144
Self-destruction, Auden on, 266
Selshness, Hazlitt on, 103
Self-understanding
Coleridge on, 113114
Iago and, 8, 28, 146, 295296
love and, 7
opening conversation between Iago
and Roderigo and, 2324
of Othello, 35
Separation, Knight on, 164165
Sexuality
Nuttall on, 287288
Shakespeare on, 3
Vogel on, 138
Shakespeare, John, 1
Index 324
Shaw, George Bernard, 98, 134136
Short View of Tragedy (Rymer), 46, 47
Skin color
Adams on, 99, 118126
Auden on, 273
Coleridge on, 114
Gildon on, 7677
Goddard on, 189191
Lamb on, 102
nineteenth-century critics and,
9798
Roderigo and, 56
Schlegel on, 97, 100101
Taylor on, 97
twentieth-century responses and,
138
twenty-rst-century interpretations
and, 297
Smock Alley Teater, 84
Soliloquies, Bradley on, 147
Speech
Adams on, 122
Coleridge on, 114115
Desdemona and, 14
Empson on, 138, 179186
Iago and, 2425
Kermode on, 302304, 308311
Knight on, 137
Nuttall on, 286288
of Othello, 26, 38, 40
power of, 8
Rymer on, 4849, 5354, 5960, 65
Steele, Richard, 83, 85
Storms, symbolism of, 169170
Strength, Desdemona and, 200
Structure, Bradley on, 137
Suicide, Nuttall on nobility of, 280
292
Superiority, Iago and, 150151
Swift, Jonathan, 75
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 98,
127134, 140
Symbolism
Burke on, 224251
Goddard on, 217219
Knight on, 157161, 168171
Temptation, Kermode on,
310311
Teobald, Lewis, 8990
Toughts, Rymer on, 5455
Tragedy
Auden on, 262
Goddard on, 186188
Hazlitt on, 103
Hughes on, 8689
Knight on, 137
Nuttall on, 282283
Schlegel on, 100101
Swinburne on, 133134
Voltaire on, 92
Transcendentalism, 221222
Transformation, of Othello, 3133
Traps, Goddard on, 187
Trojan Horse, 195
Trust, Auden on, 277278
Truth, Bradley on, 140141
Turks
ghting against, 6, 7
importance of to plot, 196200
invasion of Cypress by, 45
Tyrwhitt, Tomas, 113
Venice, 7576, 270274
Venice, Duke of, 42, 53
Verdi, Giuseppe, 99
Vigny, Alfred de, 98
Villains
Auden on, 262263
Bradley on, 139140
Goddard on, 193
Violence, Heilman on, 254256
Vogel, Paula, 138
Voltaire, 84, 9092
Index 325
Warriors, 196
Wars
Goddard on aspects of in play,
196200, 222223
Iago as spirit of, 195196,
293294
Knight on, 167
Weakness
Auden on, 269
Desdemona and, 200
Eliot on, 156
Knight on, 162
Welles, Orson, 138
Witchcraft, 7, 122123
Women
earliest on stage, 46
Goddard on, 188189
twentieth-century responses and,
138
World Trade Center, 297